Highwaywoman
by Inertia18
Summary: A member of the Company encounters a mysterious assailant in the Trollshaws. She is ruthless, spirited – and her loyalties are as obscure as her histories. What becomes certain of her (despite Thorin's distrust) is one thing: she is a valuable asset to the quest for Erebor. And she may just leave with more than dwarven gold. [OC Romance/Action/General/M for future chapters]
1. Prologue

**AN: ****This is my first Hobbit Fanfiction. In no way do I own any characters/places created by Tolkien (aside from the ones I create). If you're new to the story then you're most definitely welcome to join us. I honestly hope you enjoy it. Both constructive criticisms and praise are welcome! :)**

**PROLOGUE: PICK-POCKET**

The half-man shifted through the longrass, wading its leviathan limbs like one who wished not to stir treacherous water. He did not trust the woodlands - especially under dark. Especially alone. He brandished the torchlight in his fist as if in defence. Beneath it, the flames' amniotic smear flinted his lashes and beard like match-ends. The Trollshaws hunched atop him; the little dwarf swallowed within the forest viscera.

He halted suddenly. Glared accusingly into the blackness. His thumb flickered over the sword-handle at his hip…

Nothing.

The dwarf shrugged away his suspicions, turning, and began to fumble with the ties of his britches.

_ Catch them unawares._

_ And if the net's fed! Do it! Now – _

"Evenin', Master Dwarf," the knife was cold against his throat. She gripped him tight. "Bit late out to be on your own, isn't it? When the sun's snuffed out like a candle? Lose your way, is that it?"

He scoffed. "This was _supposed_ to be the men's."

"Was it, now?" Varna pushed the knife harder. "Just appears to me like you're about to piss on some flowers."

"Suppose that's an…easy misconception."

He did not seem so afraid. His voice was wreathed with an air of self-loathing that told her he had already suspected a scenario such as this, and failed to avoid it. She perhaps had a matter of minutes to reap what she could from him. Though the half-man was somewhat shorter than she her fingers detected dormant strength in his every sinew, as is the nature of Dwarves.

"What's your name?" She hissed."Make it quick!"

His brows sloped like eagle's wings, eyes downcast, defiant.

She pressed harder, threateningly. "_Speak_."

"Kili," he spat, inching away from the blade. "Since you put it so charming and lady-like."

"Well, _Kili_," she began. "You're a lucky man. Because I'm such a _lady_ I'll propose you an alternative; the sooner you stay still the sooner you can pull up your trousers – looks like there's a chill out. Then I'll be on my way. That sound fair and proper of me?"

He twitched a nod.

Slowly, thoroughly, she mapped his body with her hands. They always reacted differently to this. Men, boys, women. Some descended into raving litany, a deaf idol in their fists, against their lips. Some were silent as the grave. It was the boys that amused her the most - the immaculate lads that twitched in both fear and curiosity of an assailant's touch. But not the half-man. If he feared her little knife there was no telling. Kili did not know it, but her blade could open his neck like hollowed-out fruit were she to but take the liberty. If they had crossed paths before his heart would not be so steady.

Varna hastily removed his knives. His broadsword hit the frost-clenched dirt with a dulled thud. She pried the rings from his fingers. She was still unsatisfied; the dwarf had scarce to his name.

"Thought Dwarves liked gold?" she demanded, irate. "Thought they hoarded it, like gluttons?"

"Though it may be difficult to challenge certain stigma surrounding my kin - interestingly enough, we don't tend to carry it round with us by the chest-load," He grimaced as her touch became rough. "For this_ precise_ reason -"

"Sh!" Varna silenced him, inching the knife further.

There were voices. Smudges, muted by wind – but voices nonetheless. Then she saw torchlight filter through the trees.

"Ah," Kili muttered insidiously. "That'll be my brother and Company."

"Is that so?" panic mounted her chest. Varna began to stuff the loot in a sack over her shoulder. Her fingers trembled, stymied by the strap buckle. Voices loomed nearby.

At last, the highwaywoman pressed her lips to the dwarf's ear.

"Well, Mister Kili, Master Dwarf – choose your preferred title," she breathed. "I'll hope for the both of us this is the last you'll be seeing of me. It's been an honour and a pleasure – _at your service_!"

And she released him. The dwarf toppled, and she leapt his sprawled body like a hedgerow.

_ Run!_ The sack clattered, her chest like pistons, frantic lungs like bellows – she ran until Kili was lost behind her. _As far away as you can, fast as you can – left – right – watch the roots – _

The staff hit her in the face.

There was a sickening crack as she upended, the night sky sloshing over her. The fall stifled her scream. She hit the ground - roots like knives. Airless chest. Her vision curled like scorched parchment.

She groaned.

The shape stooped over her, the grey beard like spun silver.

"My, my, my," he scrutinised her. "I do believe we have snared ourselves a pick-pocket."

"_Pickpocket_!" Kili crashed through the clearing, red-faced, his trousers hitched in his fist. "She robbed me pants-down, backside-out!"

She sat up, fingering her cheek. The tips came back bloodred.

"There'll be made no use of vanity here, I can assure you," the old man regarded her, crutched on his staff. The skin surrounding his thoughtful eyes creased like webbing. "Now, do we proceed with vengeance, pick-pocket? Or _mercy_?"

"Any lass with the means to rob Kili arse-out deserves decoratin'!" laughed a second dwarf. Varna started as he crouched before her, a smirk beneath his crescented moustache. "Don't believe I've had the pleasure of meeting ye'," he winked. "I'm Bofur. I'd join the consensus, Gandalf, but I'd rather keep me trousers on if it's alright with her…"

"Yet still this begs of an answer," said Gandalf solemnly. He angled her face with his staff, his stare almost prophylactic. "You're altogether inconspicuous; an operative of petty thievery, nothing more."

She looked away sourly.

The wizard regarded her with a judicious eye. "Oh, yes, I know of _your_ kind - those who would take vantage of the lonesome under dark! And a _lady _nonetheless - "

"Trust me, there's no ladies in her!" Kili said.

"I think we should keep her," Bofur suggested gleefully. "She's quite the firecracker; pants-down, arse-out…makes a _wonderful _anecdote, Kili – "

"Be silent!" Gandalf growled. "Kili. What is your decision?"

_Decision?_ Resentment swilled in her gut – never before had she been caught. Been forced to pay for her crimes. And here were three prepared to make her. Her heart flexed in her chest.

The wizard sighed impatiently. "_Kili_."

Kili's gaze hardened. "Bring her before Thorin."

The blindfold came next.

**Thanks for reading! Constructive criticism and praise are both welcome! :)  
**


	2. Chapter One: Words of Thieves

**A/N: ****Hello, all! **

**- Firstly, I'd like to thank everybody who has read the prologue for ****Highwaywoman**** – the support it has gained means an immeasurable lot to me and I am humbled and grateful for everyone's encouragement! Special thanks to:**

_Belabsouza; Delta18; .ness; luna153; yarrowbadrabbit; Avriella; Devryn; Elentary; Esvisionik; Razzika; UKReader; Verrokami; lostinloneliness; mamabam; Laura en eryn; FlaggmasterRand and various guest reviewers (Sorry if I've missed anyone!)_

**Secondly I'd like to inform everybody that as I am a student I do prioritise my education over Fan-Fiction. However I will try my very best to update ****Highwaywoman**** as often as I can.**

**- Lastly and most importantly, I hope you enjoy the update! Additionally, if you're new to ****Highwaywoman****, welcome! Both praise and constructive criticisms are encouraged.**

.

**CHAPTER ONE: WORDS OF THEIVES**

.

The uproar was instantaneous.

She staggered forth and slammed into the dirt - hands bound at her buttocks, bracken beneath her knees. Blind beneath the shift. She gasped for breath in the smoke-charred air. It had rained and the forest would not burn. Inside, her face was slick and scoldingly heatless as membranous hide. Her hair clung to her face, sodden. The hood swelled with the the sheer aggression of the Earth's every acoustic.

"_What_ is _that_?" a voice demanded finally.

Bofur snorted. "Without evading the utmost obvious, Dwalin - I believe it _is_ a _woman._" he said, "s'not like our culture - one minute they're there and the next they're off like a fart –"

"Gandalf," another silenced him. There was instant hush. It was a voice of the deepest peal; an obbligato bred from the birthright of command. "What is the meaning of this?"

"She was apprehended; naturally, after trying to ambush our young scout."

Kili spoke. "Attacked me. In the clearing."

Thorin considered the prisoner. "Show me."

And the hood was gone.

A company of dwarves. Over a dozen! Pairs of piercing, ageless eyes glared over their beards at her like spyglasses through foliage.

"Aye, it's a lassie!" one of them exclaimed, aghast.

"By all accounts she's no longer a threat, Thorin," Gandalf persisted. "However it serves all coincidence that this quest be uprooted the very moment it takes flight."

He cocked an eyebrow hintedly.

The muscles in Thorin's neck coiled.

"This quest was kept secret," he said fiercely. "Not a _word_ uttered on the matter - "

"Who did you tell, Thorin?" Gandalf growled. "Who else knows of our _King-Under-The-Mountain_?"

"Now if that's not an attack on Thorin, it's an attack on our fealty, _wizard_!" Dwalin leapt to stand, but Thorin steadied him.

"Raise your voice not to me, Master Dwarf," warned Gandalf, eyeing them one-by-one. "The forest conceals all sorts of devilry and keeps pockets deep with night-knows-what that may wish to blot out the great quest of Thorin Oakenshield! See it here!"

The wizard gestured to her.

Varna sighed, irate. "I _literally_ have no idea what you're talking about."

"So she _say_s," Kili growled.

" And what she knows could be a different tale altogether," added Gandalf imperatively.

The King Under the Mountain turned his eye to her.

"Explain yourself."

She looked away bitterly.

Thorin crouched before her. She stared at his boots.

He spoke. "What do they call you?"

She didn't answer.

Then his sullied hands were at her cheek. Demanded her.

"Maid. Look at me."

His black beard was splayed like crow's plumage, his lips charred amidst it. Thorin's braids were worn like mining dust at his chest and shoulders, the ends anvil grey, bleached lustreless like spent wick-ends. Still she did not meet his gaze.

_ "Look at me_," he growled. "I want to see your lies betray themselves."

She raised her eyes.

His were stark as ice, glinting from somnambulist hollows. She suddenly realised that searching was not an act only committed to pawing the bodies of wealthy passers-by. In Thorin's subaqueous glare she felt he was privy to every crime to her name. And it terrified her.

"Your name?" it was a command.

She yielded. "Varna."

"And you claim to know nothing? Nothing at all?" Thorin gestured around them. "You know my name. Know my quest. You have seen my Company in this very forest…"

She shook her head defiantly. "I - "

"Like the trinkets you rob of the innocent; the words in a thief's mouth are cut from the tongues of greater peoples," he dismissed her. "You know _enough_."

Thorin turned to the wizard. "You give me reason to distrust this woman. I intend to honour that."

Gandalf nodded curtly.

Thorin 's eyes sought her again. "You shall remain with my Company until a village is reached. There you will be arrested. And that'll be the end of it."

"_Thorin_. The girl's nought but a petty thief!" Bofur cried. "See it in her face. Barely into her womanhood."

"It matters not," Thorin said. "This girl will be arrested for her crimes. There this madness ends. Kili; bind her."

.

.

Kili drove her away from the clearing until the wizard, Thorin and his Company were out of sight. When he spied the stoutest tree he set their prisoner against it. Then he was knotting the ropes about her body with practiced speed, his expression impermeable. But he did not speak to her.

Varna smirked. "I'm sensing that you bear me a... _slight_ grudge."

She grimaced as he tightened the rope.

"It wasn't personal - if that's any value."

"It might not have been personal," Kili snapped, suddenly at her side. "But talk again and I'll reply to you in the only words you seem to understand." He tugged at his shirt collar, where congealed blood carved a leering rictus from neck to clavicle. "Uncle wants you quiet. So _be_ quiet."

"You ever been starved, Kili?" she asked darkly, suddenly angry. "I mean – truly starved? You look like a fine boy with fat rich parents. So tell me. _Have_ you?"

"What are you going on about now?"

"You might look at me like a thieving little cut-throat probably dragged up by a whore-mother and drunkard father," she said, leaning forth, braced by the ropes. The dwarf twitched back a half-step. "But let me tell you this, Master Kili: when you're starving, and _you haven't eaten for weeks,_ and your belly's like a blister – you come to me, and tell me whether a few cut throats are worth seeing the sunrise one day more -"

"I know what you're doing," Kili averted his eyes. His Adam's apple wobbled. "It won't work. I won't free you."

"But you could, you know."

The dwarf turned his back to her, head-in-hands. Seizing her chance she began to writhe beneath the ropes – one knot less would be enough to bolt. There was a knife at her thigh so obscenely discreet that even the young scout had overlooked it by his own reticence.

"How old are you, anyway?" she asked. "You look young – for a dwarf. And the other: fair hair…good-looking, like you. Your brother?"

"Yes. Fili."

"And are _all _your people named in rhyme?" The rope had started to slacken but she could not reach her leg. The bark raked lines over her body where she squirmed. _Keep him talking._ "Kili; you may already know this, but when I'm arrested there's only one fate awaiting me out there."

_Drop. Snap. Shit. _She had seen it many times over. Varna banished that particular nightmare: "In my culture I'm young like you. I don't want to die like that for some petty crime. Or _now_ for that matter."

Kili glanced at her over his shoulder.

"Are you married?" she inquired, overcome with sudden curiosity.

He shook his head.

"I'll bet all the girls drop down, legs wide for you," she toyed.

"_Enough_!" Kili snarled and spun on his heel. "I am Kili; nephew to Thorin Oakenshield; my grandfather was ThrainII, and before that Thror – I am of the line of _Durin_ and I will not be pandered to like some mindless rich brute in a _whorehouse - _"

"What the blazes is all the noise about?" Dwalin emerged through the thicket. Moonlight glinted in the cross-hatch of his scarring. Varna shrank away into the tree – here was a dwarf who would find no charm in her words. "Kili?"

"Nothing," Kili muttered. "She just doesn't shut up, is all."

"And what d'yeh call this?" Dwalin scoffed, jabbing a finger at the ropes that bound her. He tugged at one and it came quite loose. "What're you tryin' ter do, keep her comfortable?"

"If that's so he's making a damn mess of it," Varna sniped. "So if you could be so kind, Master Dwarf - think I've had quite enough airing out for one day. Let me down and take me to Thorin. 'King-Under-The-Mountain' - whatever he goes by."

Dwalin folded his great arms. "Last I looked, you were in no place to make demands of me."

"Oh, I don't know," Kili groaned. "Maybe if you do that he might get fed up of her and _actually_ kill her."

Varna smiled emptily. "Think I'll take my chances."

Dwalin shot her a glance. Looked at Kili.

Then his axe grinned in the half-light, and the ropes were puddled at her feet.

.

.

The leaf was fleeting rapture. When the night itself had retired to hushed entropy, and the silence wore its most solipsistic front, he liked to smoke it. Always within the liminal, infant hours of morning - when the thoughts of the sleepless are overrun with shadows, he liked to smoke it.

Like goblins scaling the walls of the mind,Thorin had not yet forgiven himself for allowing his nephews to join them.

And this woman. _Varna._ He felt it in his heart that she was nothing but ill fate.

Thorin exhaled several white bands. The memoirs he now kept of Smaug were nothing but a smudge cast round bones. Of Erebor he could barely recall.

But his hate was inexorable.

It remained like a wound; a revenant that did not need light, nor shade, nor thought to revive it. With him always. _We shall seize this chance to take back Erebor. _Thorin pressed a hand to his heart, where he kept the key to his father's kingdom, worn over the dull throb in his chest. It made him remember himself. Allowed him to banish his ghosts into lightless exile.

"Thorin. The woman. Asked to speak with you."

Thorin turned, pipe-smoke curling from his lips like a scimitar. He looked at the girl. Then at Dwalin. Nodded.

As Dwalin made to leave the girl stuck her hands out under his nose; her wrists blushed beneath the bonds. Dwalin raised an eyebrow at her.

"I don't think you have to worry about me running off," she said, and gestured to her feet. They were bound too.

"It's fine," Thorin interjected. He flashed Dwalin a glimpse of the axe at his hip assuredly. "Let her loose."

Disgruntled, the dwarf fished a pocketknife and severed the rope between Varna's hands. She sighed, flexed her fingers affectedly.

Thorin watched her.

She was quite a tall girl. And now that he truly looked at her, sobered of his rage, he knew that Bofur had been right. There were no lines in her face. Her skin was so soiled by dirt in places it looked like one abyssal bruise. And her hair; chopped by knife. Unkempt. It spluttered about her shoulders like fractured feathers, a surge of dirty black tide. On her brow was a circlet of rags.

Thorin looked at her body. The cloth shirt she wore slouched atop her like a lecherous drunk, a pair of man's leggings hitched at her waist by a leather thong. Thorin wondered what poor bastard had been forced to part with his trousers at knifepoint.

"Why do you come here?" he asked, though he knew the answer.

She raised her glacial eyes.

"When I say I know nothing of your quest what I say is true," she began. "And if I did, I'd never breathe a word."

She had come to barter for her freedom and he knew it. But with resolute bitterness he remembered Smaug. The Lonely Mountain.

"There is no act more wretched than thievery," he glowered. "You threatened my kin. Your excuses mean sorry little to me."

"When I was a child I watched a boy lose his hand for stealing bread. Do you know what my crimes are worth where I come from?"

"Many would have left you hanged in the woods for the beasts."

"And you think you're showing me a mercy, is that it?" she said bitterly. "It's not the beasts in the forest I've to worry about. Mercy's not a creature the villages like round here. What is it they call you? _King-Under-The-Mountain?" _

"Watch your tongue," Thorin seethed. "And you would do yourself a kindness to forget that name."

"I think you misunderstand me, dwarf. My freedom is not something I take lightly; it's dear to me and I will defend it. By _any_ method necessary."

And her fingers went to her throat. Thorin's hand flinched over the axe at his hip, prepared for whatever slip-of-knife she might toss between his ribs.

She unlaced her shirt-tie.

Thorin dropped his hand in paralysis. It was the most audacious thing he had ever seen. The shirt slipped, over the white slope of shoulder – to the valley between her breasts. She did not look elsewhere than at him. Thorin blinked.

When her fingers travelled to her belt Thorin caught her wrist. "Maid. _Have you completely lost your mind?"_

"Thorin!" suddenly Balin was behind her. Thorin released her wrist like a spark of black powder. She pulled her shirt together.

"Balin," Thorin croaked. Cleared his throat. "What – what is it?"

"Over the canopy – firelight." The aged dwarf was uneasy. "Should I send the scouts?"

"No," Thorin said. His heart grew grave."This is a task for our burglar."

**.**

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**Thank you for reading! Feedback is always appreciated. :) **


	3. Chapter Two: The Seed Hastily Sown

**A/N: Greetings! :D**

- **I apologise for the long wait! I've had A LOT of work to do. ** **Again, I'd like to thank every one of you who has read Highwaywoman** **so far. I appreciate all your individual praise, criticisms and encouragement so very much!** **For your contributions, thank you to: **

_AberdeenFalls; Avriella; Belabsouza; .ness; Carlypso; Delta18; Devryn; Elentary; Esvisionik; FlaggmasterRand; Razzika; UKReader; Verrokami; Laura en eryn; lostinloneliness; Luna153; mamabam; westwingnut221; xDaughterofKingsx; yarrowbadrabbit; nomorebananas; liriethmaethor; Tathal; jinx248; SylphJr and various guest readers_ _(Sorry if I've missed someone, just tell me off later)_

**- I found this chapter the most testing to write out of the others. But well…it's something! I hope that you enjoy it, it's a tad longer than the others. My apologies!**

- **Finally, if you're new to Highwaywoman – you're always welcome! I encourage everyone to share their thoughts here and welcome both constructive criticism and praise. **

**CHAPTER TWO: THE SEED HASTILY SOWN**

"What do you mean…" Varna's voice wavered. "_Burglar_?"

Balin cast her a half-glance and pursed his lips. She saw the distrust and caution leaf over his face. He hesitated and turned back to Thorin. "I'll see to it that Mr Bilbo is sent."

Thorin nodded. Then Balin was gone.

"You have a burglar?" Varna pressed. "What for?"

"The burglar is no business of yours," he snapped hotly. Thorin raked a blackened hand through his hair. She saw that his ears smarted wine-red, and his frown was like cracked pot. He refused her gaze.

Varna raised an eyebrow.

Then her hands wandered back to the shirt-laces, where the cloth yawned about her bare skin.

She blinked in surprise. "So it's true what they say about men. Even ones like you."

"And what's that?"

Varna unhooked another lace. "Just never thought it likely a king such as yourself'd be sent into a stutter over toys he can play with whenever he wants. "

"So-be-it, maid, if you don't stop those fingers – on my honour, I'll have you lose them."

"Tell me, do you call every woman you cross paths with 'maid'? I knew a gent similar once. Course he wasn't a gent. _And_, he never had a lass naked for free- "

"_Durin's mercy_!" Thorin turned on her and seized her shoulders so roughly she could make no struggle. His fingers screamed colourless against the rings he wore, kneed into the flesh of her arm.

"Now heed these words, _girl_," Thorin said, and narrowed the space between them.

"Given that dreadful ultimatum," he snarled. "I would sooner swear down my axe to Thranduil himself than throw myself into the ashes of any bargain of yours."

She tensed as his thumb traced her cheek, to her neck – shoulders. A blunt-ended blade.

"No," his eyes were lightless. "There is not an inch, nigh league of your _spent skin_ that could will me humiliate the line of Durin for the revels of a _whore's itch_ -"

Varna spat into the dwarf's face.

Thorin flinched away, momentarily startled. He wiped the spittle from his cheek.

"Cover yourself up," he said. It was barely audible. "This will not happen again. _Dwalin_!"

The dwarf appeared. "Thorin."

"I trust that Bilbo has not returned?"

Dwalin shook his head.

"And Gandalf?"

"Not seen him since."

Thorin turned to her again. He took her hands – quite forcibly – and began to bind them.

"What's to be done?" Dwalin asked.

"Our burglar is missing," Thorin croaked; tightened the cords. She winced. "We must salvage what's left of him from the mess he's no-doubt strayed irrevocably into."

"And take what we please of that fire," Dwalin's moustache twitched over the grin he wore. "Bombur's the only one of us not dying of frost and I've half a mind to think the others are considering eating him…what – what _are _you doing?"

Thorin knotted the rope-end over Dwalin's forearm. The dwarf cocked an eyebrow at her. Then at Thorin.

"You _are_ joking with me, Oakenshield?" he scoffed. "What did I do to earn this highest of honours?"

"If it helps, you're not exactly my favourite, either, little man," Varna interjected, and tugged the rope in discomfort.

"Little ma... _little man_?" Dwalin gawped. "Thorin – you must be joking. I don't even tolerate children – you _must_ be joking!"

"I don't think Thorin does that, either."

"Peace, for pity's sake!" Thorin cried. "Just - "

"Uncle!" a third dwarf crashed through the trees. His braids and beard were bleached like thatch – she remembered him to be the elder brother of Kili.

When Fili eyed Varna by Dwalin's arm his lip curled amusedly. "Well, Dwalin, I must say the new bracelet's _divine_; truly brings out the bitterness in the eyes."

Dwalin grumbled.

"What is it, Fili?" Thorin asked.

"Ori and I went a little further up to investigate," he said. "A lot of scuffling. Foul smell. Something's definitely amiss."

Thorin's hands were already over the axe. "Follow me – and be quick about it!"

Dwalin dragged her in his wake.

.

.

The stench was eviscerating. The dwarves hunched in disgust, one after the other, before it hit her. She suppressed the urge to gag. Ahead, somebody retched but was silenced by a punch. Varna suspected that whatever - or whoever – this burglar was, _Bilbo_: he was done for. Nothing good loitered here. The soil squelched where they stepped, soaked with dung. It welled between her toes.

Far ahead, Thorin raised his arm to halt.

Dwalin tugged at the rope.

"_Over there," _he whispered.

She peered through the high grass.

There were three of them. Like columns of diseased bark, the firelight curdled in their stagnant hide. _Trolls_.

"_Any mor'a you little fellas hidin' where y'shouldn't_?" one snarled, his great mouldered arm stuck out into the air. Somewhere she heard Kili start but Thorin subdued him.

The little thing squirmed in the troll's fists. "No – nope!"

"He's lyin'!" spat another, and made to snatch the hobbit up. "Put 'is toes over the fire – _make 'im squeal_ - "

"Kili – _no_!" but Kili had already leapt into the clearing, past Thorin's reach.

There was a sound like hacked firewood and the second troll buckled to a shriek. Kili jerked his sword from the thick ankles and swung again at the creature's toes.

"_DROP HIM_!" he yelled, and brandished his sword.

Hobbit-in-hand, the troll jabbed a finger at the dwarf. "You _what_?"

"I said," Kili dragged a sleeve across his bloody face. "_Drop him_."

The troll scoffed and tossed the hobbit aside, felling them both. Then he lumbered towards Kili -

"NOW!" Thorin bellowed.

And the dwarves spilled into the clearing.

The trolls bleated in alarm. Adrenaline possessed her as Dwalin thrust her forward, into the maw of fists and axes and stomping feet. She caught her foot on a root and ploughed chest-first into the soil, narrowly missed by a blade.

"GET UP, GIRL!" Dwalin hauled her from the dirt and slammed his hammer into a troll's gut. "_You'll be the death of us both!"_

"_What do I do_?" Varna yelled. She ducked beneath Dwalin's swing and the troll pawed his belly in horror.

"First, avoid all things sharp!" Bofur cried elsewhere.

"Or not!" Dwalin offered. "That bit's…entirely…up to _YOU_!" He struck again, exposing his back to her to reveal a couplet of war-axes. She swiped for one –

The colossal fingers groped at her leg and fished her from the forest floor. "_Dwalin_! The clearing capsized. Varna swiped at the ground – a root – _anything_! She tossed fistfuls of dirt aside. "_DWALIN_!"

Dwalin swore in pain as the rope yanked at his forearm. He spotted the troll.

"Oh no ye don't!" he growled, and sank his hammer into the earth before he too could be hanged. Both great fists came up, onto the cord, and he yanked hard until he was crosshatched in veins and spittle was on his lips. "_Come on, y'great DOLT _!" he challenged. The troll roared and raised her higher -

There was a sound like crushed bracken, and Dwalin's arm splintered, vaulting clean from the socket. He cried out and was nearly upended himself when an arrow crossed the rope between them.

The first frayed it. The second spliced it in two.

"Stick him! Stick him, Varna!" Kili shouted, and fired a third. "_Do it_!"

Dwalin flung the trolls' kindle towards her with his free hand. She caught the ashen log and jabbed it, fire-first, into the troll's eye. From below, Ori fired rubble into the other and the oaf's fists flew open.

She fell.

Varna slammed into the ground, breathless on impact. The battle tolled in her ears. It was then she realised the ropes at her hands had slackened somewhat. Frenzied, she wriggled her wrists free and tossed the threadbare shackle away. Dwalin was nowhere to be found. She fumbled for the knife she had so desperately been trying to reach; the knife that Kili had not seen. She unsheathed it. _Sharp enough_.

Varna staggered to her feet, disoriented by the fall.

One of the trolls came perilously close to crushing her. She sloshed forward, turning only to see Thorin's axe cleave into the troll's shin like an oak. He made to deliver a second blow.

Thorin's face fell as he realised it was firmly lodged. It would not budge. The dwarf slammed his boot against the troll in panic and he tried to wrench it free -

Across the clearing, Kili spied the unsheathed blade in Varna's hands. He saw how she watched his uncle.

"_THORIN_!" but he did not hear.

Tremoring, Kili took aim over the girl's heart. He wet his lips and steadied himself. _Don't do this. _As she bolted, knife-in-hand, Thorin spotted her too. Shouted in alarm. Stuck his shield-arm out in defence.

"_Move_!" then both her hands went to Thorin's chest and shoved - hard. The axe slipped from Thorin's fingers where he toppled, away from the troll's lurched swing. Kili dropped the bow in horror as it snatched Varna from the ground.

"Y'wretched little bitch!" the troll snivelled. "_You 'orrible little_ - "

She slammed the knife hilt-deep between the troll's eyes. There was an anguished scream as the troll clutched his face and cursed. Then, like an exiled toy, he flung his captive into the trees.

The last she recalled was the branch that knocked her out cold.

.

.

"These look to be good blades."

"These blades were not made by any troll."

Varna's senses sharpened slowly. She stirred, adjusting to the pain in her skull. Migraines bloomed in the backs of her eyes like smashed fruits. It was dim, and humid, and smelled foul. The shapes before her lulled into focus – the wizard. And Thorin.

Gandalf half-drew the sword in his hands. "Nor were they forged by any smith amongst men. These were forged in Gondolin…by the high-elves of the first age. You could not wish for a finer blade!"

She seemed to be in a doorway. Or a tunnel. The dewy light of morning snipped through the dankness and outside she heard birdsong. Varna squinted and shielded her eyes.

"Gandalf!" Bilbo fidgeted anxiously beside her. "_Gandalf_!"

The wizard turned to the both of them.

"Ah!" he exclaimed. "Our guest awakens. Good morning, my dear!"

"Is it?" she replied groggily, and raised herself on her elbows. Instantly one of the dwarves pushed her back to the ground in flustered protest.

"What?" she cried. "What did I do?"

"You'll have to forgive Oin, dear girl," Gandalf began. "He's er…rather hard of hearing."

"Aye, deaf as a post. Don't worry, though," Bofur chirped, chewing on his pipe-end. "Master healer. Have y'fixed up in no time!"

"F-fixed _up_?" she spluttered. "I'm fine!"

"Did y'hear that, lads?" Bofur shouted over his shoulder. "_Lass' fine_! And while we're at it, lay down yer arms, 'ave a smoke – seems we've come to the lonely mountain at last!"

Gandalf grumbled in distaste.

Varna frowned. "Are you _mad_?"

Bofur grinned. "Well if that's not the lonely mountain on yer head, I'll be damned!"

The cave rumbled with laughter. Varna fingered the welt on her head lightly – it was tender, and almost melodramatically large. The slashes on her arms and face were pungent in healing paste.

"That'll be the _ointment_," Bofur continued. "Give yeh three guesses as to where we got the name for that from - imagination's not our strong point."

"And what of the knife?" Thorin emerged suddenly from the darkness.

Varna tensed, overwhelmed with immediate disdain – there was no gratitude in Thorin's words. "Sticking out of some troll's head, last I remember."

"Where did you get it?"

"It belonged to me!" she said angrily. Faltered. "In a fashion."

"Think we've found ourselves another burglar, eh, Bilbo?" Fili remarked in passing, a barrel slung over his shoulder. Varna was suddenly overcome with thirst; she swallowed past the drought in her throat.

Thorin's eyes were sombre. "You were dishonest with us. You cannot justify that."

"Don't you think if I wanted you dead I could've made much better use of my opportunities?" she retorted. "_Any_ of you?"

Thorin's face flushed beneath his beard.

"What she says is the truth," Gandalf declared. "Thorin; I believe she intends you nor any dwarf here a hindrance. See it for yourself – the injuries she wears are her sacrifice alone. The seeds of distrust are all too-hastily sown." Gandalf turned to her with regret. "A wrong I, too, am guilty of."

Thorin's discomfort was evident. He sighed.

"I cannot grant you freedom," he said to her wearily. "However, you saved my life. Tonight you may take what you will of our fire, and what little we have in the way of food. We have been robbed of a night's sleep. Gloin – take first watch. We rest here for the day, and tomorrow we move on."

She no longer held the stamina to protest, and her fury ebbed into insomnia. The dwarves settled about the cave, relinquishing their weapons and burdens if only for a moment's peace. Thorin was lost almost instantly. Balin. Then Oin. Bofur snored beneath his tipped hat, Bilbo beside him. The younger dwarves chattered amongst themselves. But the night's events wore at them like seasons over rock, and slowly the conversation began to dwindle. Fili fell. Then Ori.

At last, Kili rolled over and was motionless.

She shivered with cold, and then sleep took her too.

.

_Existence can be a hardship in itself. You know this. And if there's one thing you must learn - one thing you must always remember …when you find yourself alone, and on the road: never allow yourself to dream, child. Sleep is as much a mutiny unto the weak as a handsome fella in a darkened room. Even when the backs of mischief seem all but turned away from you – never dream. You may wander the divide between them, sleep and wake – but never cross. And keep one eye open! And that way no world will ever ravage you, my pet._

She resisted him instantly. Varna swiped out into the nothingness, fright in her chest; airless lungs. Desperately, she snatched at the hand crushed over her mouth.

"Sh!" he hissed. "_Will you stop struggling? Stop -_ _please _- _Varna!_"

She twitched awake.

Pitch-black. The hum of snoring dwarves rolled up and down the cave-throat, beneath the waning torchlight. Varna blinked.

"Kili?" she whispered. "What are you _doing_?"

"Please - just shut up, don't say a word," he grimaced, and withdrew a small knife. "Before I rethink this entire mistake."

She flinched against the warmth of his hands. Then he cut her bonds.

"I should never have brought you here," he breathed.

Her lips parted, dumb-founded. "I robbed you."

"And you saved Thorin's life," Kili replied. "I want nothing more from you. Go – you're free. If you must leave do it quick. Now."

Even in the darkness she could sense the gravity of his decision. The punishment he might face. He raised his chthonic eyes. Her heartbeat thrummed in her head. When the first unwelcome tear cut its way through her sullied cheek she wiped it away defiantly. But the second came soon after.

"Well? What say you?" he said.

Varna leaned forward, quite quickly, and kissed the dwarf's cheek.

"Bless you, Kili," she stammered, and made to stand. "Bless you."

She fled.

.

**Thanks for reading! :)**


	4. Chapter Three: Daughter of Archet

**A/N: Evenin', folks!**

** - First up, thank you for your wonderful responses to Chapter Two. I always try to take the advice given to me as best I can and hopefully it showed in the previous update. So, honestly, a massive thank you to all of you:**

_AberdeenFalls; Avriella; Belabsouza; .ness; Carlypso; Delta18; Devryn; Elentary; Esvisionik; FlaggmasterRand; Razzika; UKReader; Verrokami; Laura en eryn; lostinloneliness; Luna153; mamabam; westwingnut221; xDaughterofKingsx; yarrowbadrabbit; nomorebananas; liriethmaethor; Tathal; jinx248; SylphJr; Viper; Purr; Elven Kat; Lelani101;EvilPurpleCookiePenkeyMonguin; Starriver92; mcgonagiggles; Typewriter101; RandomTweaker; Holeintheworld93; Sarasrii; Nyeht and various guest readers (Sorry if I've missed someone)_

- **Also, this chapter is quite long, I'm sorry! I'm not too sure about it yet, it's a little experimental. You'll meet some new characters and perhaps some new concepts, so I'd appreciate it if it was read with an open mind! But if this backfires? Seriously, I'm blaming Easter eggs. I have eaten an absolutely obscene amount and feel like I'm in some sort of chocolatey prison trance. So, if this is terrible – the eggs did it. :P**

- **Finally, if you're new to Highwaywoman, you're most welcome! Please feel free to share your thoughts. Any questions, PM me. Both constructive criticisms and praise are welcome. :)**

**(Also, I PROMISE the next chapter I write will be goddamned shorter! Heads-up for a little violence and ****_some_**** adult language)**

**.**

**CHAPTER THREE: DAUGHTER OF ARCHET**

It swilled in her belly like a sickness. Angrily, she swatted at the tears on her cheeks, twitching with cold. Conscience was a creature eagerly dismissed by hate, or greed or hunger. In fact, since first she had taken up that knife, and used it willingly, she thought of it as nothing but a scorned outlander. She was convinced that it could die like everything else.

_You saved his life. I want nothing more from you. Go – you're free._

But these tears were overwhelming. And the kindness she did not merit taunted her - took root in her chest, mind, heart, being. It was a more immovable shackle than had been any rope Thorin put to her, and she loathed it.

"_Stop it, Varna_," she whispered. Wiped her eyes. "You're being a right bloody fool."

She walked on unsteadily, her steps hushed by the wind. Perhaps if the breeze had picked up that night she would not have found herself in Thorin's company. Perhaps Kili's steps would not have woken her - she would not have spied his torchlight. And her stupid, puerile, _profane_ little heart would not now ache with things she had been sure were no longer hers to feel.

Kili did not realise just how much she had fleeced from him. He did not know that saving Thorin's life was a negotiation of her freedom. She had taken vantage of his kindness and humanity and it had worked, as she knew it would. The shame scorched her cheeks. She cussed in his name. For the first time in what seemed like an age Varna allowed herself to cross that dreaded synapse of past and present, that which she had boarded up long ago:

She remembered her home - the farm, her father's house. The memory of that house traversed literal distance in her head, now obscure but ever-painful. She shut her eyes. Did they still think of her? Or had they locked her memory away, grieving her as the ghost of what once was?

And Reiyas. What of Reiyas? Would he have forgiven her? The names and faces in her head thawed like a re-opened scar. For this, Varna was glad to think that her family may think of her dead. For this, she -

_That stench._

Varna froze. It was unlike the trolls. The terror of being both unarmed and alone detonated in her chest. Silently, she slipped into the shadows, out of the pry of the moonlight. Why had she not taken a weapon for herself? It seemed so unlike her. Kili's knife had been there, at his hip, and she could have stolen it subtle as babe's breath!

The stench sharpened: sodden animal pelt. A ranger, perhaps? Then she listened to the footfalls on the undergrowth – the clawed gait. The thing did not walk upright, like a man. Varna cursed.

She crouched against a tree. It might pass her by -

The thing snorted. Then the creature arched its back; pelt splintering upright like spears, and howled. Varna flinched, slamming her hands to her ears - over the discordant blood-cry.

_Wargs._

Numb, her fingers sought the bark above her. There were ridges large enough for a foot. _Climb, _she told herself fearfully. _Climb_ -

"Get up." And the blade jabbed at her jaw. "Don't get innovative, now."

Varna turned her head slowly.

"You're no orc," she said simply.

"And fortunate that is, too!" the man snarled. "_Up_."

She stood. The man hunched over her and ground her into the trunk, pressed the knife to her neck. The lustreless eyes roved her body as he wet his lips. "What is your name?"

"Oh, come now, you don't name the _goat_ before you eat it."

His mouth twitched to an almost-smile. "Archet?"

She stiffened. "W-what?"

"_Archet_," his smile was hollow. "In Bree-land? Your accent - very distinct. You're far from home."

She stared at him mutely.

"Tell me, what do you know of the Warg, my lady?" he asked coolly.

Varna side-glanced at the creature. At the spittle-edged spines the great slab of jaw could barely contain. The eyes blotted out by bloodlust. She saw that it was chained.

"Not much," she breathed.

"T'is a most mercurial beast, the Gundabad Warg," he continued. "But she is not unlike others. They can be bent, if only you know the right words. Like a piece of music. What do you think of her? She's quite lovely."

"Please, I think you've mistaken me for someone else -"

"And do you know what _I _think, my lady?" the man seized the front of her shirt. "I think you _reek _of dwarf."

.

.

"Good evening, gentlemen!"

The Orc scouts paused, bread-in-mouth.

"'Tis the most auspicious of nights, indeed!" their Ward exclaimed gleefully. "Tell me, where is Bolg?"

They continued to gobble. Snorted. Grunted something in Orcish.

The Ward sighed, irate.

"_Pulga,"_ he declared, over-enunciating. '_Prisoner_'. "Pulga!"

He stooped as a clay-mug flung over his head. The orcs cackled -

_"Ru-eeg!"_ _Silence._

There was a uniform hush as one of the orcs rose from his seat on the felled log. He eyed their Ward repugnantly, with obtuse distrust.

"Pulga?" Bolg barked, stepping forth. "_Prisoner_?"

The Ward nodded. With a flourish, his arm went out, and in it his fistful of the woman's hair. The Orcs went into uproar. She dropped to her knees and the Ward wrenched her head back, into the light. The scouts ogled the fearful flicker in her neck.

"Tell them what you know," the Ward ordered. "Tell them what you know of Thorin, son of Thrain!"

"Torin undag Train-ob?" Bolg repeated, and glared at Varna. His eyes gave a zealous flash. "_Talk_!"

Varna looked at him. He was the palest orc she had ever seen. The ashen-white flesh was like bunched clay, sprouting in fine hair the consistency of smoke. Spiked armour. Thickset.

The Ward gave her a shove. "_Well_?"

"I don't _know_," she snapped on impulse, so much that it shocked herself. "I've never heard of him!"

"She lies. Smell it on her, Bolg," the Ward sneered. "She reeks of the Dwarf-Scum -"

"I didn't see any dwarf, I swear it!"

Impatiently, Bolg gnashed his teeth and snatched her face into his fist. She went limp with fear. Then the orc set his knife at her cheek, as if to peel it. Varna swallowed.

"Orcs are not the most merciful kind, my lady," said the Ward, with relish.

Bolg made to cut -

"Alright!" she shouted, panicked - twisted away from the knife. "Alright! I saw them - your dwarves."

"Where did you see them? What was their heading?"

Bolg's eyes narrowed to pin-pricks. He pressed the knife into her face, into the wounds that had already closed. "_Whur_?" he grunted.

He carved.

She squirmed in his grip. Squealed. The pain was like a scorch-ended iron. Bolg grinned as her blood wove hot rivulets in his fingers. The Orcs jeered.

"Tell him, my lady!" chided the Ward.

"I…don't – _KNOW_!"

"You can end this yourself," he said. "Or do I have to burn all of Bree-land to the ground before you will swallow this insolent pride? Tenacity will get you nowhere!"

"Fuck you," she barred her teeth.

Silence. Then the Ward crossed his arms:

"You leave me no choice. Bolg; cut off one of her toes."

"_What_?" she cried. "NO!"

Bolg frowned confusedly.

The Ward made a guillotine with his hands. "_Du'u_b." _Foot._

"No!"

The Orcs came down upon her in fitful swarm. She yelled out, writhed away from Bolg's knife - but he had her anchored. His sallow fangs were barred in his galleon-grin; eyes alight with lunacy; revelling in his own strength. The orcs seized each of her flailing limbs. Smothered her protest. A final fearful spasm ripped its way through her body.

"Please – don't!" her voice cracked. _Tell them. Tell them! Tell them of Thorin! Of Kili!_

Bolg seized her foot. Set the knife against her toes.

She swallowed the urge to puke.

"Will you yield?" The Ward was at her side, his lips at her ear. She shuddered. "Daughter of Archet?"

The words jarred in her throat. _Tell them. _

She shook her head tearfully.

_TELL THEM!_

Then, with a motion that was almost tender, Bolg sliced off the girl's toe.

.

.

"Thorin, we caught her as a thief, and a thief stays one," Dori said bluntly. "She probably got herself out!"

"How? Tell me _how_?" Thorin growled, and held out his hands. In them was a slit rope. "Her bonds were cut!"

"Probably stole a knife, or somet'in - there's so many in here," Bofur said, pipe-in-mouth. "Dori's right; the girl's wily enough alone, you saw her with the trolls – she never needed help from any of us!"

Kili kept his eyes fixed to the ground and chewed slowly. The mutton could not rid the sour taste in his mouth - he had been an arse and an idiot. His entire body was tensed; twinged with sleeplessness. He had contemplated chasing her down, dragging her back, that it had been a mistake. But Kili had not moved until the dawn had sleepwalked into the cave passage - and Thorin had been in a rage ever since.

"Don't you put the blame on me, ye' runt!" Gloin was shouting. "When I woke you up for watch she was right where she was supposed ter be!

"And yer suggesting I did this?" Dwalin raised an eyebrow, and gestured to his crippled arm. Oin had bound it after the run-in with the trolls. "Of course! I'm struggling ter wipe my own _backside_, but going round freeing girls, that's my _top priority_!"

" In that precise order?" Fili smirked. "I'll trust he wipes his hands _before_ he frees the girls."

Ori snorted into his cup.

Kili forced the mutton down his throat. When their uncle had told them of his quest he had seen it as his window of opportunity – he would prove his worth, put his long-nurtured skills to practice. Their mother had been reluctant at first. But the brothers had spent months beating Thorin into submission on the matter – and now he had so fleetingly disregarded that trust. And for what? A kiss in the dark?

He had told himself that he freed her out of the noblest intention. She had saved the life of a man he could call father, uncle _and_ brother - that was enough. Even if she deserved every punishment set by the laws of her people she had no place with their Company. And it had been his pride, that kindred plague upon the men of Durin's line, that had put her there. He had behaved like an infant, injured to have been outfoxed trousers-down.

And the way she had _toyed _with him – it would be a barefaced lie, downright denial, to say that she played no part in her freeing. This would horrify Thorin most of all -

"You!" Nori said, pointing a finger at his brother. "You dozy great lump – you were on watch after me. Probably too busy scrawling little pictures of butterflies or else-knows-what!"

"I didn't do it!" Ori spluttered, almost woundedly. "Honest, I didn't! And I don't draw _butterflies_ - "

"What does any of this matter?" Thorin said exasperatedly. "Loyalty. Honour. A willing heart – did I not ask this of all of you?"

Silence. Kili avoided even the eyes of his brother.

"Will none come forward?" Thorin persisted.

Kili inhaled. He opened his mouth to speak -

"Thorin," suddenly Bilbo was standing. "I-"

"_You_ did this?" Thorin cried, aghast.

"I...I fell asleep on watch," Bilbo wrung his handkerchief in his hands. Kili gawked in disbelief, his mouth agape." And when I woke she was gone. I – I'm sorry."

"Why did you not sound the alarm?" Thorin gasped. His rage streaked into the black of his beard. "_Why_?"

The hobbit grimaced. Shuffled. "I -"

"Enough," Thorin cut him off. His shoulders sagged in dismay. "I've heard enough. The rest of you: we walk on at noon, be ready. _You_," he glared at Bilbo. "Say nothing more to me."

They watched Thorin jam his boots onto his feet in silence. Then he grabbed at his fur overcoat, shrugged into it and withdrew his pipe.

Kili flinched aside for his uncle to pass. Then Thorin was gone.

There was a moment.

"Well, y'heard the man," Balin sighed gravely. "Get to it."

The dwarves began to make preparations for leaving. There was little talk. Kili rubbed the nape of his neck. There was a sensation in his gut that he could not expel - that he had fallen from a precipice and could not touch ground. It was almost asphyxiatingly so. He glared into Bilbo's turned back, at the lull of curls bobbing as he went about his business. _He had to know._

"Why did you do that?" Bilbo started as Kili seized him by the elbow.

The hobbit paused. "Do what?" he continued to fold his things.

"You know what I mean!"

Bilbo's eyes gave an evasive flicker. Kili hesitated:

"You didn't free her, Bilbo," he said. "You couldn't have."

The hobbit's eyes softened. He smiled. "I know that."

"Then you saw who did."

"Kili, you had your reasons -"

"I was going to tell Thorin," Kili groaned. "I would have told him!"

"Well, until then," Bilbo pushed the buttons through his waistcoat. The hobbit laid a hand at Kili's shoulder. "Think nothing on it."

.

.

_Burglar be damned!_

Thorin pinched the dried-leaf between his fingers and thumbed it into the pipe-end. Put it to his lips. He prayed the first drag would dull his fury. Truth be told, there was a little of him that was relieved – the notion of being betrayed by one of his own was a hammer on anvil in his chest that even the leaf might not steady. Bilbo's partake compensated for this. He had almost expected it of him.

Nevertheless, he was addled.

What reason had Bilbo for letting her flee? Pity? To Thorin's recollection the two had exchanged not a word. Perhaps he had taken a liking to her, thought her handsome? It was not _infeasible_. Given a basin of water and the teeth of a comb there might be some who would call her fair. She might have offered herself to Bilbo, as was her appeal to Thorin…

He scoffed.

He let the pipe fill his lungs until his anger ebbed away like tide, until his extremities were prickling with the bliss he so often craved -

Thorin paused and lowered the pipe. The air had suddenly chilled. The longrass bowed. Overhead, the trees shuddered as birds vaulted from their perch. Thorin tensed - his fingers went to the blade at his hip.

"Something's coming!" he shouted.

The dwarves came bounding from the cave-mouth.

"What is it?" someone cried.

"Stay together!" Gandalf bellowed, emerging himself. "Hurry now, arm yourselves!"

They readied themselves. Thorin raised his axe, sword in the other, fully-braced. "Ithrikî…" he uttered. _Steady._ "Ithrikî…"

The ground rumbled beneath their boots. The trees shunted apart –

"_STEADY_!"

The dwarves yelled in alarm. Thorin's heart thumped against his ribs and he froze, unsure that he could trust his own eyes. Blinked. What in _Durin's_ name -

Gandalf beamed beside him. "Radagast!" and the wizard set down his sword. "Radagast the Brown!"

The others exchanged looks of bewilderment.

"You know this man?" Thorin barked, disbelievingly. He glared at the stranger. At his rabbit-drawn sled.

A wizard's staff. His wiry hair and beard tufted out of the skin-hat atop his head, his garb a slobber of shaggy pelt hanging over his old man's frame. Thorin raised an eyebrow, mildly revolted: Radagast's temples were begrimed with what looked like bird excrement.

"Radagast!" Gandalf scowled beneath his hat. "What on _earth_ are you doing here?"

"I was looking for you, Gandalf! Something's wrong," the stranger jittered, squint-eyed. And he looked around them, as if in fear of who might be listening. "Something's _terribly _wrong!"

.

.

The wizards had been in counsel for too long. So long that the words they exchanged could not be blessed with good tidings; Thorin itched with a sense of foreboding. They were losing precious time and he was growing anxious for dusk, nightfall. The moon was already waxen spectre in the midday sky, and he would not risk travelling by dark. Around him the others had slumped in lethargy, beaten by the humid, groaning heat of the Trollshaws.

"If we stay here another night I'll trust the wizard'll be payin' for wasted food," Dwalin grumbled, eyes shut.

"What're they talking about, anyway?" Ori chirped, the pages of his journal sprawled out in his lap. "Can't anyone hear?"

"Quiet, Ori," Thorin grunted, partly because he was just as curious. "They'll be done soon enough."

He watched his nephews. The two were in close talk; so peripheral they might have been separate to the group. For once their faces were laughter-less, and Kili would not meet the eyes of his brother. It was clear he was getting a scolding - such a disagreement was unusual. Concerned, Thorin sat up.

Whatever he might say was lost. There came a wail, shrill and blood-starved, that rolled in the wilderness ahead.

"Was that a wolf?" Bilbo leapt to his feet. "Are – are there wolves out there?"

Bofur clutched his mattock close. "Wolves? No, _that_ is not a wolf!"

Thorin unsheathed his sword - he saw it before the others. "BOFUR, MOVE!"

The dwarves shouted in terror as the creature vaulted, crashing into the undergrowth amidst them. With a snarl, the jaundiced eyes sought Thorin - made for his arm with gnashing maw. Thorin yelled and swung the blade, jarring it into the creature's throat.

"_Thorin_!" He flinched aside and the whirr of Kili's arrowhead darted his ear. The second beast came hurtling from the trees with an anguished shriek - slamming to the ground with pierced-skull, unhinged jaw. The first-slain convulsed round Thorin's blade as he tugged it free, throat ajar, the ground sloshed with arterial blood.

"Warg scouts," Thorin spat, looking the corpse over. _Varna. _"Which means an Orc-pack is not far behind!"

"Orc pack?" Bilbo was white-faced.

"Yes, _Orc-pack_! Freeing girl-thieves seems like a foolish idea all of a sudden, does it not?" Thorin roared. "She did this, I see it in your face! Lament the flames of your own arson, burglar - _this is your doing_!"

"_Thorin_," Balin snapped. "There is too little time for this!"

"He's right," Radagast said suddenly. "Go – now! I'll draw them off!"

Gandalf huffed and turned on him. "These are _Gundabad _warg_s_. They will outrun you!"

"And these are Rhosgobel rabbits!" Radagast returned. "I'd like to see them try."

"Aye! Then it's settled!" Dwalin urged. "Thorin?"

There was no other option. Thorin nodded. Radagast disappeared. Then the dwarves bunched together and fled the opposite way, crouched on the fringes of the forest. Waited.

When Radagast gave a triumphant cry Gandalf urged them forward. "It is time! Come on!"

And the Company bolted – out of the trees, onto the plains that lay on the forest threshold. Thorin's head hummed with adrenaline, stifled by the sudden exposure. Nobody spoke. This charade would be short-lived and soon all fifteen wargs would turn their teeth upon them. Thorin could barely breathe. The terrain was perilous and uneven, scattered with shard-like rock – Fili seized Bifur by the arm as he lost his footing.

"Stay together!" Gandalf hissed. "Stay together!"

Thorin faltered as the band of wargs skirted the horizon before them. "Go back!" he snapped. "Back!" The company floundered, fleeing towards the security of the rocks. Thorin banished the thought that they were children cowering at the hem of a mother's skirt. Ori darted past him, into plain sight -

"Ori - no!" Thorin snatched at the dwarf's satchel and he toppled backwards. "This way!"

"Quickly, now!" Gandalf urged.

Ori leapt to his feet. "Wait!"

Thorin wheeled round, his chest tight. "What is it?"

The dwarf pointed at the plains beyond. "On that Warg there!" he cried. "_That's_ not an orc scout!"

They spun in unison, stupefied. There was no denying the form of a man astride the latter beast, his long limbs far from the gnarled hunch of a Gundabad scout. But he rode like an Orc all the same. Thorin was unable to shake the spook in his chest - this was unheard of. Then, with horror, he saw that the man did not ride alone.

Enraged, he turned to Bilbo.

The hobbit quivered. "What? What's the matter?"

"It's your _thief_," Thorin snarled. "Your thief rides the Warg."

.

**Thanks for reading! (No, really – THANKS – this was a long chapter, I'm just glad you survived!) =)**


	5. Four: A Poison Too Quick To Be Drawn

**A/N: Hello!**

**- So, life has been VERY busy lately! I've done 2/4 exams now and the next two are a week away so this chapter has taken a long time to write in between that! Thank you to everyone for such patience, it means everything. =) **

- **My utmost thanks to:**

_AberdeenFalls; Avriella; Belabsouza; .ness; Carlypso; Delta18; Devryn; Elentary; Esvisionik; FlaggmasterRand; Razzika; UKReader; Verrokami; Laura en eryn; lostinloneliness; Luna153; mamabam; westwingnut221; xDaughterofKingsx; yarrowbadrabbit; nomorebananas; liriethmaethor; Tathal; jinx248; SylphJr; Viper; Purr; Elven Kat; Lelani101; EvilPurpleCookiePenkeyMonguin; Starriver92; mcgonagiggles; Typewriter101; RandomTweaker; Holeintheworld93; Sarasrii; Nyeht; Rae01; Nicooled; ; luciluce; Shadowkitten8; janaoliver; SerendipityAsAlways; SunnyGirl88; Cyphercat; DrAnime203; animechika24601; UnderRugSwept13; Samolfran and various guest readers J (Sorry if I've missed someone)_

- **Thirdly – if some of you are wondering, this is intended as a romantic Fic, however I'm not one for rushing relationship storylines. So fear not, ****_someone_**** will be lovin' ****_someone_****…sometime…:D. I have ideas, indications…but I'm letting that side of the story write itself, as it were :)**

- F**inally – all new readers are welcome! I encourage everyone to share their thoughts/ideas/questions. Reviews are appreciated – constructive criticisms and praise are both welcome. I hope you enjoy! ****[Beware: mild violence, language etc]**

** .**

**CHAPTER FOUR: A POISON TOO QUICK TO BE DRAWN**

"What a load'a nonsense!" Dwalin shunted through the band of dwarves and slammed the butt of his hammer earthwards, his knuckles white in their iron gauntlets. "Men do not ride Wargs – and neither their women. It's utter shite!"

"Do you mean to call me a liar?" Thorin challenged, and stepped aside. "See it for yourself – it _is_ her, make no mistake of that."

Dwalin looked. The sheath fell over his eyes as if he could not will himself believe it.

"Bilbo," he glowered. "You better be dreaming up some charmin' excuse for this…"

The hobbit gawped.

"I didn't know!" he protested. "_Thorin_ – I swear to you, I didn't –would _never_ - "

Dwalin cut him off. "Your woman's a traitor!"

"M- _my _woman?" Bilbo was taken aback.

"Aye, _your_ woman! A _traitor_!"

"She was never an ally," Thorin growled, and the others fells silent. He craned his neck around the rock, ever-watchful of the Warg. Shuddered. There was a wind, vehement and heatless, that snatched the warmth bosomed in their bodies and the vigour in their souls – and no doubt it would carry their scent. He knew that there would be a struggle sooner or later.

Thorin's hands bunched to fists: his eyes sought her. _Highwaywoman of the Trollshaws._ Even in the remorseless cold his chest blazed with all the undoing of Smaug's arson. Never before had a woman stirred in him such hate. She had slipped into the heart of his company like a poison too quick to be drawn. Too sly for remedy.

And the next they crossed paths he would have her know the grave mistake she had made.

"Thorin!" he twitched as Gandalf's hand came down on his shoulder - the others had already fled. "Hurry now!"

He cast a final glance and hurried in the wizard's wake, unable to shed the cold caution that hardened in his gut.

Beyond, Radagast's sled darted across the hillside.

"To the rocks!" someone hissed.

They ducked out of sight. The dwarves huddled, pressing their backs as far into the rocks as possible. Thorin shifted his weight away from the sharp jut of the boulder. Tried to steady his breath.

Beside him, Bofur flinched. He fingered his head gingerly; debris from the rockface dashed his hat and cloak, and more came over him like dust. Bofur flashed Thorin a look of fear - he did not have to speak the words to be understood.

Warily, Thorin pressed his ear to the rock:

The rake of talons. Unsheathed blade -

Then the Warg snorted above them. The Company stilled in unison. It would only have to step forward…

Desperately, Thorin looked to his nephew. Gestured to his bow.

Kili faltered as he realised his uncle's meaning.

_Finish him, Kili. _

The young dwarf reached for his quiver and set the arrow. He drew a steady breath. Then he leapt into the open –

Kili saw. He gave a start and the arrow twitched off-course – striking the rider in the left shoulder. He shrieked. Behind him, the woman's head snapped up and consciousness sharpened in her face. Their eyes locked.

"_Kili_!" but Varna's mouth was bound.

Kili leased the second arrow and the Warg buckled.

He took aim at the rider's head.

The man screamed before Kili could fire. Varna had launched at him, seizing the arrowhead in his shoulder. The girl wrung it – then jammed it through flesh and blood before the bone. The man gave a strangulated scream and grabbed at her wrists, but she was utterly relentless. His blood frothed in her knuckles. As he writhed in anguish the Warg bucked, delightfully spurred by the sudden violence.

"Kili!" Thorin yelled. "Silence them!"

But Kili could not clear the shot. _It would kill them both –_

There came a muffled shriek and Varna lost her grip on the arrowhead. In a flurry of broken curses the man seized a fistful of her hair – she screamed. Then he tossed her from the mount itself, flinging her over the rock with a savage snarl. Kili cried out.

Her face struck ground and she was limp as cloth. The man ripped the arrow from his shoulder, tossed it aside, and then he and his Warg were gone.

Enraged, Kili made to follow –

"Kili, No!" Thorin thrust a hand into his chest. "There'll be more coming."

"It's alright. She's still got her senses!" Oin declared suddenly.

Thorin wheeled round. Oin was kneeling, the girl's head in his hands. The dwarf angled her face and Thorin saw that her hair was slick with blood.

"I cannot treat her here," the dwarf said. "We need to - "

"No!" Thorin's hatred bested him. "We must move – leave her be."

"_Thorin_!" Gandalf bellowed. "I'll not have you leave her here in such a state! Not for your damned Dwarvish stubbornness!"

Varna's head lolled and she met Thorin's gaze. "_Don't_," she mumbled. Her lips twitched as if they could not race her mind. "Please…don't…don't leave me."

"Uncle, we have little time!" Fili cut in.

Thorin shook with rage; he would never hear the end of it. Then he frowned as he spied Varna's left foot – it was wrapped tight in cloth, the same rag that she had once used to bind her hair. It was drenched a pestilent black. Blood.

"Can you walk?" He inquired.

She hesitated.

Thorin wrestled Bilbo's walking stick from him and tossed it to the floor in front of her. "Don't fall behind."

A jarred howl split the silence.

Gandalf stiffened. "Move!" he ordered. _"Run!"_

They wasted no time. The Wargs shrieked overhead, echoing in every discernible direction – the reality of battle would soon be at their doorstep. Far behind, Thorin caught sight of her – tears were on her face, though she refused to cry out. Varna swung her raggedy foot before her, weighted on the too-short staff, hobbling manically in their wake, in terror of the hounds.

Dwalin fell behind and hooked an arm about her.

"No!" she pushed at his chest. "I can walk!"

"Aye, and I've a full head of hair!" he retorted, and drew her into his grip. She collapsed into him. "Now get your arse moving!"

Ahead, Kili came running back from the hilltop. "There's more coming!"

"We're surrounded!"

Thorin wheeled sharply. _ Where was Gandalf? _ The wizard was nowhere to be seen. He could nothing but swallow the panic that reared in his chest and mounted his throat. It was like all in the earth had cast sundown upon his cause with the smothered hush of a burial sheet. The great dogs loomed over the plains, at every escape – they were abandoned.

"Hold your ground!" he ordered, and unsheathed his sword.

"A knife!" Varna cried. "_Please_. I need a knife!"

"No!" Thorin barked before Bofur handed her one. "No knives! You'll have no weap - "

Thorin's retort was lost. His surprise suppressed his anger as he caught the tip of the wizard's hat emerging from the ground. And then Gandalf himself.

"This way, you fools!" he waved his staff.

A tunnel.

With relief Thorin charged towards the entrance and glared down – a dank cavity in the plain's belly. To where it lead he did not know. And he did not care. He span towards the Company.

"Quickly, all of you!" he roared.

The dwarves went in one after the other. Ori. Bofur. Dwalin –

As she passed him, Varna lost her footing. On impulse Thorin's hand went out and he seized her roughly by the arm. She gasped. Her eyes flicked to his in surprise.

Thorin averted his. "Watch your step." His hand came away. She watched him still. "_Go_!"

Thorin looked into the plains. Ahead, his nephew shot one of the Gundabads through the skull.

"_Kili_!"

Kili doubled back and vaulted into the tunnel. Then Thorin took one last glance.

He jumped.

.

.

.

_"…And that way no world will ever ravage you, my pet." _

_Varna winced as the braids in her hair were tautened. Outside a lightlessness had come over Chetwood forest. The trees knocked their wiry limbs against the windowpanes. _

_"Are you listening to me?" the woman pressed. "Varna?"_

_She tore away from her thoughts. "Sorry. Yes, Ma."_

_The braiding continued. _

_"And tomorrow?" Ma pressed. "Are you going down to the farm?"_

_In the window, she saw her mother's reflection – the subtle joy that upturned the corners of her mouth. Her mother's smile was one that could lift all hardship and worry that life had left in the flesh. Varna could not help the smile that sleepwalked across her own lips. "Yes. They're short of labourers as it is."_

_"I'll take it you're fond of Mister Isake, then?"_

_"I like him well enough. Why shouldn't I?" The creature in Varna's lap made playfully for her finger. She scratched behind the cat's ears. "Isake's been good to us since Da fell…" she trailed away. "Ma. Do you think he'll be walking properly soon?"_

_ " Don't ask silly questions. Your father's tougher than that cooking of yours – and that's saying something. No little tumble's going to change that!"_

_She frowned. "Thanks. I think."_

_"Oh, Varna, please don't say ' thanks', it's uncouth..."_

_"Sorry," she muttered. "'Thank you'."_

_Varna grimaced as the comb teeth raked through numerous knots. _

_"Of course by the time you're married it won't matter," Ma continued. " Worry not. We'll have got you cooking properly by then – though at the moment there's not a man with a stomach strong enough!"_

_Varna gnawed at her lip and bit back her retort._

_"Speaking of such," her mother smiled. "Hasn't Mister Isake mentioned anything of the sort to you, yet?"_

_"About what?"_

_"I always said to your father that you had a hearing problem - marriage, child!"_

_Varna froze, so caught by surprise that the cat's claw snagged her finger. _

_"Well, has he?" Ma pressed._

_Varna stiffened. Stared at the bead of blood on her fingertip. "No. Should he have?"_

_"He has you down on that farm almost every day, and you haven't wondered why?"_

_"No!" she was mildly horrified. "Besides, he's been widowed a month. And he still drinks it off!"_

_"Eru bless me! Not Isake, child," her mother scolded. "That son of his."_

_Her heart flinched out of step. "Reiyas?" _

_"He's handsome, don't you think?"_

_She had thought him so for the summer she had worked Isake's farm. Once – just once, they had shared a kiss. It had been very quick. But often she found herself watching his mouth while he worked, and she wished that she could kiss it again._

_"I suppose he is," she finished lamely. _

_"Well," Ma looped the final knot into her hair. "It's only a matter of time."_

_She could not contain the delirium in her head. Varna turned in her chair so violently the cat leapt from her knees in fright. "Do you honestly think so?"_

_Ma stooped. "I know so, pet," and she kissed her brow._

_._

_._

_._

Varna twitched awake. Sunlight streamed through her lashes and birdsong was in the air. The drowsiness lapped at her like warm tide. She stirred.

"Wake, Varna," and the hand was on her shoulder. "Daughter of Archet."

The hand was cool as spring. Consciousness thawed in her body. She opened her eyes.

The man smiled.

"Do you know me?" she was suddenly afraid.

Varna examined his face. His skin was ageless, as white as the woven circlet on his dark head. In his eyes she saw something timeless, boundless. A creature that assumed the gaze of a much younger being. She gasped. The tales of Rivendell once told as fable to a little girl were suddenly starkly real.

"Lord Elrond," she whispered.

He nodded curtly.

Varna swallowed. "Then surely my name is not all you know of me."

"The slanders of vengeance are seldom entirely honest."

Disgrace bloomed in her cheeks.

Memory surged through her head like a garrison in a conquered citadel. Ward. Bolg's knife – the plains. They had escaped. Then into Rivendell, through a hidden pass. Away from the Gundabads. She had been on the threshold of consciousness, slumped at Dwalin's arm. The elves had taken her - Oin was forbidden to follow. The night was one of pain and sleeplessness. She had sobbed as they worked on her foot – the bathwater had been black.

Varna lifted the bedsheets tentatively. The jagged stump of toe jutted out and was scabbed with stitching. But she could not control the shiver that ran her through.

"My scarf," she said, numb with panic. "My scarf - I used it as wrappings…for the toe…"

But the elf's hands were already over hers. Varna froze - she felt cloth slide between her fingers as Elrond placed the rag into her palm. Her chest slunk slowly.

She clenched the stained cloth in her fists.

"Then you know. It's done," she croaked. Tears fell into her lap. "And the dwarves…?"

"It would not be my place," Elrond said.

She looked at him.

"My lord, no act of thanks could _ever_ …I…" the tears were scolding and saline. "You must know I have done unforgivable things. What Thorin says of me is true - "

"_Thorin, son of Thrain_," Elrond surveyed her beneath his winged brows. "Has not seen all of you." And he looked at the cloth in her hands. "He will not understand what he does not know."

"I don't wish him to know," she said bitterly. "I owe him nothing."

"Then the secret is yours to keep," Elrond rose from his seat beside her and made to leave. Awed, she stared at the lull of his cloak, stupefied by the sheer craftsmanship of such a garment. She prickled with shame, acutely aware of her own vulgarity in the eyes of such sublime majesty. She had never been in such a place before and wished that she could look upon its beauty forever.

"How long must I stay here?" she asked.

"You may leave at your own will."

She sat up. "Then I'm not arrested?"

The elf smiled. "You may leave now, if it pleases you. Though I would not advise it - "

As his fingers hovered over the handle, the doorway rattled.

"My Lord Elrond," someone cried from behind. "Mithrandir is here!"

Elrond cast her a permissive glance. She nodded.

The door opened and the wizard stepped through. Elrond slipped away. Varna swung her legs over the bed and made to stand.

"Oh, no, no," the wizard said. "Do not stand on our account, not if it pains you."

She halted as she saw the man at Gandalf's side. Thorin's hands were clasped – and he did not look at her. He looked in more discomfort in the halls of the elves than had he ever in the wilderness. His stature was taut – as if he were on permanent guard of himself.

"No, it's fine. I'm able," she drew herself to stand. Varna winced as her foot hit the floor. Pain hummed in her head. Cuts and swellings tingled at her cheekbones.

"In that case," Gandalf said. "Might you sit down?"

Varna limped to the nearby table and slunk into a chair. The wizard turned to Thorin.

"Do you have all that is required?"

The dwarf eyed him.

"_Thorin_?"

"Yes."

Gandalf huffed. "Be civil!"

And before she could protest the wizard was gone. The door slammed behind him.

Silence.

Varna threw Thorin a fleeting glance. His sunned skin was cleaner, beard almost inked darker. The fur overcoat was gone. He carried no weapon. After a moment, he stepped forward and withdrew something. He set down the parchment in front of her on the table, his shirtsleeves rolled into the crooks of strong forearms, knotted in dark hair.

She gestured at the paper. "What's this?"

Thorin said nothing and put down something else. It fell with a clunk.

It was beautiful. Enthralled, she made to take it -

"Please," he spoke brokenly. "Do not. It belonged to my grandfather."

Varna's fingers flinched away.

"Aren't you going to sit?" she said.

"Gandalf has bid me ask you something," he ignored her. "But there of questions of my own that I would have you answer first."

She raised an eyebrow. "What?"

The dwarf regarded her with caution.

"When you rode with the Gundabads, what did you tell them?" he said solemnly. "Other than our whereabouts. What else did you betray of my Company?"

"Betray?" Varna scoffed. "I don't recall ever being friend to you."

She sighed. "I told them nothing. There was nothing _to_ tell," Varna caught the subtlety of his gaze at it roamed the ailments on her body. She crossed her arms over her chest. "And I don't care to know, either."

Thorin's eyes narrowed.

"If you must have it so," he growled. "Your foot - that fate. It was never my intent."

"No. Just an execution in Bree for thievery, was that it?" Varna glared. "How kind."

"A prisoner with no tongue and no use is a corpse. If you had little worth to them why are you still living? Orcs are not known for acts of mercy."

She looked away angrily. "I don't want to talk any more."

"You must tell me."

"I must tell you _nothing_, dwarf."

She watched the outside. Thorin's gaze fell upon her as if it carried physical corporeality. He searched her face. She knew there would be no lies that could witch him.

"There was a man," she said finally; absently. "A man rode with the Gundabads. His name was Ward."

"What of him? Varna?" Her name on his tongue was an almost unwelcome deviation. He hesitated. "This man. Did he…claim you?"

"Must you ask that which you already know?" she spat.

Thorin bowed his head. "That was out of turn. Varna, I came to tell you that you are no longer my prisoner."

She raised her eyes to his.

He continued. "And when you leave this place, I will not pursue you. What Gandalf means me to do, however, is warn you."

"Warn me of what?"

"Where I will not pursue you, others may," His face was impassive. "If you are hunted on the road – and you shall be – you will not be spared. Gandalf thinks it unwise that you leave alone."

She could not breathe.

"Look at that parchment," he said.

"What is it?"

Thorin's eyes glinted. "An alternative."

Very slowly, Varna unravelled it and smoothed it out before her. She blinked. A map.

"Tell me. Do you know this land?" he asked. "What do you see?"

She squinted. Hotness swelled in her gut and smarted in her face, arms and chest. Varna's lips trembled. There was a silence.

"I…" she swallowed. Could not meet his gaze. Varna pushed the parchment away from her. "Thorin, I do not read. I never have."

"Then I'll show you. Move aside."

She heard Thorin close the space between them. The dwarf reached over and tapped the script beneath the likeness of a mountain – and the drake-in-flight at its summit.

"This place is the Lonely Mountain," he began. Varna shifted, unsure of his closeness. "My Company and I – this is our heading. It was once the kingdom of my people. I intend to reclaim it."

_King-Under-The-Mountain_. She remembered.

Her eyes sought the dragon, inked in scarlet.

"Smaug," Thorin said quietly, as if he had anticipated it. Varna caught the lunacy that pooled in the abyssal black of his eyes. She did not need to ask of the dragon to understand.

"The dragon has not been seen for sixty years," Thorin continued. "And the halls of Erebor were rich in gold and precious metal -"

"That's your motive?" she said, mildly irate. "For gold?"

"Fate saw to it that the key of my grandfather came to me," Thorin added defiantly, and brandished it. "The dragon would not know the scent of hobbit. Bilbo is our burglar. I want you to train him."

"Teach him to steal?" Varna eyed him warily. Shook her head. "No. No - it's _foolish_. "

"I did not ask your opinion. I am offering you work. Safety. Honour."

_Honour. _She guffawed.

"It would pay well," Thorin crossed his great arms. "One fifteenth of the profit is yours, should you take it."

"Why?" she stammered. "Why do you ask this of _me_?"

"Because you so easily stole from the line of Durin," Thorin said. The sunlight was molten forge in his irises. "Because you escaped the Gundabads. Because you are a savage. You _are_ a burglar," Thorin finished. "And Bilbo would do well to learn from you."

The dwarf extended his hand.

Varna's heart flexed in her chest. Gold was the salvation she had looked for in the pockets of unwilling passers-by for one year of her wretched life. Gold banished the miserable memories of the things she had done. But it would never redeem them. Though home had found her once more in her dreams she knew that she would never be welcomed in that house again as what she had become. And she did not want to return to the Trollshaws. Never to _that place._

And whether the dwarves had interrupted her narrative, or she broken theirs; they were bound. She would not deny it.

"If I agree," she said. "This changes nothing. You are no friend of mine."

"That sentiment is reciprocated."

"For the _gold_, nothing more -"

"Just take the hand, girl!"

Varna seized it. Their fingers clasped.

Something akin to a smile flickered across his lips. "Balin will write you a contract. I'll have him dictate it to you."

Thorin's hand came away. She dropped her own and stared into her fingertips, where still they burned with the heat of his skin. Thorin began to gather the things from the table in silence and then made for the door.

He halted.

"One last question - before I leave," he began. "Of the night you fled."

Varna's chest stilled. "I'm listening."

Thorin glanced at her over his shoulder, his hair splayed about his broad back. "It was not the hobbit who freed you."

She looked at her hands. "No."

Thorin's smile was sorrowful.

"My nephew is a skilled bowman," he said, barely audible. There was grief in his eyes. "Even in childhood. He does not hesitate. And he misses his mark sparingly, if at all."

And he was gone.

.

**Thank you very much for reading! Nothing in particular happened here, but the action/ arse-kickery will be back shortly! But yeah, I suppose this chapter focuses more on developing certain characters and their relationships. :) Reviews, feedback, questions - all appreciated. **

**[NOTICE] My next two exams are very close and so this will be the last update until after May 21st.****If you wish to check up on the progress of future chapters I have started to write 'updates' about them on my profile. Again, thank you so much for reading I could not do this without your help! J**


	6. Five: A Brotherhood Amongst Burglars

**A/N: Hello! It's been a while!**

- **Finally, the exams are over! I wish everyone the best of luck with their own. Firstly, thank you so much for the wonderful support/guidance/patience of you lovely readers:**

_AberdeenFalls; Avriella; Belabsouza; .Ness; Carlypso; Delta18; Devryn; Elentary; Esvisionik; FlaggmasterRand; Razzika; UKReader; Verrokami; Laura en eryn; lostinloneliness; Luna153; mamabam; westwingnut221; xDaughterofKingsx; yarrowbadrabbit; nomorebananas; liriethmaethor; Tathal; jinx248; SylphJr; Viper; Purr; Elven Kat; Lelani101;EvilPurpleCookiePenkeyMonguin; Starriver92; mcgonagiggles; Typewriter101; RandomTweaker; Holeintheworld93; Sarasrii; Nyeht; Rae01; Nicooled; ; luciluce; Shadowkitten8; janaoliver; SerendipityAsAlways; SunnyGirl88; Cyphercat; DrAnime203; animechika24601; UnderRugSwept13; Samolfran; CreepyLOTRfangirl55; BloodBlackAlchemist LadyxAbsinthe; becky157689; FlyingPurpleUnicorn; Ninediva; islegion; ThisIsYourWaffleSpeaking; Ginger-ninja-squid-fish; Iris-Read92; ForAslan; blitzbeine; forgottenchangeling and various guest readers :) (Sorry if I've missed someone)_

- **As for this chapter, I'm really looking forward to working into the new relationships/conflicts within the Company. Also, if anyone hates the flashbacks, you're in luck. This next one is the last for a while!**

- **As always, positive feedback and constructive criticism is entirely welcome. New readers always encouraged! I hope you enjoy it! (Next post shall DEFINITELY be shorter, let's hope y'all survive...:/ )**

**.**

**CHAPTER FIVE: A BROTHERHOOD AMONGST BURGLARS**

.

_Varna nudged open the farmhouse door. "Isake?" she called tenderly. _

_The house was silent. She glanced over her shoulder: the superior's cart had not moved. Nor his horse been saddled._

_The pounding in her chest intensified. Perhaps he was numb with drink again? Isake's wife had passed away recently - after a long and cruel illness - and such grief was not so easily washed out. She remembered Isake's wife a plain woman but one whom Isake adored, as the mother of his children. It was a hindrance to think on it. One moment there, the next, snatched from all significance and loving memory as if one never came to be. In fact, she was appalled by the fickle misery of fate:_

_First Isake's wife. The next, Da had fallen from the roof. _

_But she worked in her father's place readily, for as long as it would take him to regain himself. His days were volatile – some he would seem all but mended and others he would cry through slurred speech and lips that could not articulate what was in his heart. _

_Varna closed the door behind her gently. She took a few steps. _

_"Isake?"_

_She found herself in the dining room. It was simplistic. The shelves were dense in dust. Webbing mauled the ceiling. There was an askew pot on the table, dribbling ale - the room yearned attentions that were now long-lost. _

_"Isake?" she was wary now. "Sir? Are you well? I've come for Da's wage!"_

_"Little demanding of you, don't you think?" _

_Varna gave a start and wheeled round. _

_His lithe limbs were outstretched to their full breadth in the doorway; worked hands groped either side of the frame. He smiled: a long-legged and narrow-hipped young man who had forever chased adolescence while it teased him recklessly ahead of his years. Now his entirety could only stand at a crooked bow within the frame itself. His hair was the hue of rust, like a cockerel's plume. _

_The blacks of his eyes swelled into the brown as his gaze fell upon her. "You're Ronias' girl." _

_"Yes." Her face prickled._

_"From up near Chetwood. Varna, I believe?"_

_She nodded. "I was looking for - "_

_"Father's not here," he stooped and entered. Varna watched him silently as he erected the pot that had fallen. "And while he's away I am the Master of his house. I'm Isake's son. Reiyas."_

I know_, she thought. _

_He leant against the table and rubbed his hands at his thighs, freeing them of the day's dirt. The soot of his beard glinted copper at his jaw and mouth like the first probe of harvest through earth. Reiyas wet his lips. _

_"Now. What is it you wanted?"_

_She hesitated. _

_Reiyas smirked. "Don't be coy, lass. Money, for your…'da', was it?"_

_"I can come back tomorrow morning - "_

_"Isake won't be back tomorrow morning, either," Reiyas' mouth puckered in amusement. _

_"He won't?" _

_"No. On a pilgrimage – or so he calls it," his tone darkened. "Now you see why I'd rather pay you all the gold in my pocket afore he pisses it away on the alehouses and Eru-knows-what."_

_"I'm sorry."_

_"Don't be daft," he smiled. Watched her. Sunlight teased at his irises like heat. "I have seen you before, in these parts. Haven't I? Should think I'd remember a face such as yours."_

_Her insides writhed. _

_Reiyas continued: "You always work hard. I admire that."_

_"My da…" _

_"Aye. I remember," he said solemnly. "As I recall father liked him. Skilled carpenter, too. Shame. How does he fare, now?"_

_"__Sometimes for the better. And…sometimes not."_

_"__I'm sorry to hear it. Fate's a fiend."_

_There was a silence. After a moment he straightened. "Anyway. That's enough talk of misery. I'll get you that money."_

_He disappeared. Varna released the air in her chest and pawed at her skirt, trying to rid the wetness that pooled in her palms. Her cheeks were ablaze and she knew it, which only reddened them further. _You damned fool, Varna, _she chided herself. _You stupid, damned fool -

_Reiyas returned._

_"Here," he handed her a leather pouch. _

_She looked inside. Gasped. "Mister Reiyas, Sir - "_

_"'Mister'?" the young man made a face. "'Sir'?"_

_"I – it's just…this…this is far too much!"_

_"And what lady is more deserving?" Reiyas' hands were suddenly atop hers. She stared into their entwined fingers, utterly entranced, as he spoke again. "Take it; for your family's troubles."_

_"I…couldn't."_

_"Then, as a kindness to my father!" he urged. "And to me. But likely not to the alehouses."_

_She stuttered a laugh. _

_Reiyas considered her. Suddenly he gave the girl's hand an affectionate, ambitious squeeze. Her touch roused him._

_"Are you married?" he asked, very quietly. _

_Varna met his gaze sharply. Her lips quavered in response, and she was suddenly, overwhelmingly, aware of his being there. "No. No, I'm not -"_

_He sloshed forward and caught her mouth in his. She stiffened, stunned by the sensation. She had kissed men before - but only timidly. Suddenly Reiyas seized her waist and drew her to him – she clutched at his chest, almost having lost her balance. It only spurred him further. He grinned against her kiss. She felt the tingle of his chin. H__is tongue was tracing her upper lip – implored her mouth to open. It seemed natural; polite, even. When her lips yielded Reiyas' throat filled with a low, triumphant growl._

_Varna closed her eyes._

_Gingerly, she reached up. Ran her curious fingers through his red hair. Then there was heat in her mouth, and it bloomed in places she had never given thought, like a majestic flower springing amongst the fallow. Varna seized him by the ears and kissed him forcefully, as if in a great thirst. A great hunger. Her teeth pinched at his lower lip – Reiyas groaned. The young man could not believe his fortune as the girl pressed herself against his hard chest, groin-to-groin, mouth-to-mouth. But her clothes frustrated him – _

_Varna broke away – sharp. _

_"What's the matter?" he said. _

_"I'm sorry," her face crumpled. "I…I can't."_

_She fled._

.

.

"Is it your foot?" Bilbo asked beside her. "Do you need a rest?"

Varna blinked, torn from thought. The memory lingered like a foul after-taste and she was relieved for the distraction.

"The foot's fine," she said, casting a glance to Thorin up ahead. She did not want him to have a reason to doubt her. Walking did not come with ease - if she hitched up the leg of her britches it would reveal a network of leather and buckles strapped about her leg like a scaffold: a brace that Oin had hastily fashioned for her.

Rivendell was behind them. Dawn pushed hard at the horizon. The mountains huddled around them like conspirators in counsel, reaching their summits at sickening altitudes. The rocky ravines below riddled her insides with vertigo, but she kept her mouth shut.

"Be on your guard!" warned Thorin. "We're about to step over the edge of the wild. Balin, you know these paths. Lead on."

"Alright, laddie."

She would not ask, but _knew_ they fled. She could feel it. During the night Bilbo had been sent to her and bid her to dress and ready herself. Then they had left in a procession subtle as shadows, wordless as the monastic silence. But they were one short.

"Where is Gandalf, anyway?" she hissed to the hobbit. No reply. "Bilbo?"

She spotted him at the rear of the party and limped to his side. "What is it?"

She saw.

The Last Homely House, bosomed between the hulled valley like a child within the womb. She was suddenly overcome by sadness, guilty that they had fled in spite of the gentility of the elves.

"Master Baggins!" Thorin was surveying them over the curve of his axe. "I suggest you keep up."

He met her gaze. Thorin's eyes lingered about her face, for a moment, until he nodded towards her foot – she knew the scolding was meant for her also. Then the dwarf turned and disappeared around the rockface.

Varna swallowed, irate. They moved on.

.

.

Some time ago, the mountainous terrain had bowed away to verdant plateaus. Talk withered out; they were slow. The hours had worn them down with limbs that were leaden, struggling against the thrust of crippling midday heat.

"Stop!" Thorin growled, at last, and threw his arm out. "We'll rest here. Half an hour."

"Thank Durin!" Bofur cried. "I was beginnin' ter worry Bombur was turnin' to a blister!"

There was a unified squat of dwarves as they collapsed to the ground. Thirst was rife. Varna dropped her walking staff wearily, fingering the sun-rash that cloaked her shoulders. She burned on the outside and ached on the inside – never wished so longingly for rain.

Dwalin grunted. "We stay out here much longer, and we'll all be turnin' to chips."

"Chips?" Ori cried, outstretched on the grass. "Oh, what I'd give for chips!"

Nori elbowed him.

Kili swallowed dryly. "Maybe Ori could draw us a likeness of some..."

"And we could all stare at it," Fili groaned.

Varna unlaced her boots and threw them aside.

"That brace doing y'any favours, darlin'?" Bofur inquired. Sweat dappled on his hatless head.

"It's doing its job," she scrutinised the brace. "Where'd you get the leather?"

"Aye, I _wonder_!" interjected Fili, his beard-braids jiggling beneath a playful smirk. "_Wherever _could one embark upon such… last-minute ingenuity? _Brother?"_

"I don't _know_, Fili," Kili grinned. "But I've a feeling there are a lot of comfortable horses back in Rivendell."

There was laughter.

Beside her, Bilbo was silent. There was a frown beneath his curls as he ran a forefinger over the hilt of the sword in his lap. She was suddenly curious.

"And you?" she said to him.

Bilbo looked at her. "And I what?"

"Have you ever stolen anything before?"

He shook his head. "Not a thing," Bilbo tittered nervously. " Not even a penny in my Tweens!" He looked back at the sword sullenly. "I suppose you've had a lot of practice."

"Probably more than I'd like to admit."

Bofur's hearing was keen. "And what about yer means?" he chimed in. "No lass pockets the earth without a bit of _persuasion_. And I'm not talkin' the kindly ways, neither."

Varna faltered over his question.

"A knife," she said. "I'm good with knives, and not much else."

"Bloody _sharp_ knives, as I remember it," Kili muttered.

Balin was leaning inwards with excite. "So… you've done your fair share of fightin', as it were?"

"Not exactly."

"But you've used a sword before?" Thorin raised an eyebrow in concern.

Varna could not mask her discomfort. "Once."

A fool she had intercepted on the road would not part with it out of his care for the jewelled hilt. There had been a struggle.

"Well, then she'll have nae trouble!" Gloin rumbled. "Dori – lend yer sword, let's see 'er duel!"

Oin nearly choked on his water. "_No_!" he spluttered. "No more _goddamned injuries_ – girl's like a patchwork, already! We'll be carrying her in _sections_!"

"I'll do it," Fili was on his feet, sword drawn. "I'll fight her."

"Will you, now?" Varna said cuttingly.

"Oh, there's nothing to fear…" Fili's lip curled amusedly. There was mischief in his voice. "I _promise_. I'll be perfectly gracious."

Dori offered her his sword. As soon as the full weight of the blade was in her hands she felt it strain in the entire length of her arm.

"This could cleave open a man's skull," she was half-afraid.

Fili winked. "On your mark, Varna."

Behind him, Thorin rose to stand. Orcrist, the blade, was drawn.

"Move aside, Fili," he ordered. It was cold, pre-emptive. Fili stepped aside without question.

"Should this quest run aground," Thorin continued. "Appeals for mercy will be ill-received. You must learn to fight. And never to hesitate."

"On what terms?" she said, eyeing Orcrist with caution. "At what point do we stop?"

"At the first utterance of pain."

Varna's heartbeat quickened. She gripped the sword tighter, barely able to lift it.

Thorin gave her no time. Orcrist cut towards her. Swift. She cried out and flinched backwards – recoiled, twisting away from the blade. Thorin waited for her to right herself, but there was a smirk between his beard.

He struck again. In desperation, Varna hauled Dori's sword into the air – the blades smashed together with relentless force.

"Did she just do that with her eyes shut?" Fili frowned.

"Aye, I believe so," Bofur grinned. "Here, Varna, that's certainly a step towards being very, very _dead_!"

She dodged again and the whirr of Orcrist was at her nose.

"Strike back!" Thorin snarled.

She was exhausted. Breathless in the heat. Her arm went out, and with it the sword – Thorin had but to twitch his hand and deflected her. Her throat sparked with an infuriated scream and she swung again, wild. Metal slammed against metal – the collision shuddered through the blade and the length of her arm like a quake. Thorin attacked once more and the sword swerved out of her hands and flung into the grass, upright in the soil like a mast.

"Your footwork is clumsy, Varna." Before she could respond Thorin uprooted her with a single, savage kick. She buckled. Thorin seized her mid-fall.

"It's imperative," he added breathlessly. She felt her body burn beneath his fingers. "You must always -"

He could not flinch away quickly enough - her hands were at his belt. She snatched the short-sword from its scabbard and swiped, clean and swift. The knife slipped across his jaw – very lightly, with no more fury than a kiss – and snagged at his beard.

Thorin snarled. Swore. He released her and she slammed to the grass, knocking the air from her chest. Fear hardened in her gut.

But Thorin made no retaliation.

The dwarf reached up, slowly, and touched his jaw. The wound was a slit, parting his beard like the rake of a talon. A rivulet of blood slipped from his neck to chest.

"Better," Thorin commended, though he was aggravated. "We'll continue tomorrow -"

"That's it?" Varna panted.

Thorin sheathed Orcrist without a word. He turned to the Company. "We need to move on. Ready yourselves. Fili, Kili; search ahead."

There was bustle. After a moment Varna staggered to her feet and dusted herself off, delirious with what had just happened. For the sensitivity of Dwarven pride, she was certain it would not be forgotten.

The hobbit was suddenly at her side. "I imagine you thought that went unnoticed?"

She feigned surprise. "What?"

_"I saw it with my own eyes!"_

Varna halted, cautious of eavesdroppers. "Good," then she smirked. "You were supposed to. You're learning."

Bilbo was taken aback.

"Are - are you _mad_?" he grimaced. "He will realise it, you know he will!"

"He _won't_!" Varna silenced him. "Thorin asked me to teach you what I know, and I am – so keep your mouth shut! Distraction. That's_ your_ first lesson."

.

.

The days had grown bleak and bleaker still. It was naïve of her to hope they would not take the mountain pass. Lightning lashed the blackness above. Her fingers groped and slipped where the rain scourged the rock. Their walkway was reduced to nothing more than a shunt of granite – like protuberant bone, fracturing from the mountainside. At her feet was darkness. In her wake - darkness. Cold had all but immobilised them. She spat rainwater.

There was a commotion behind her and she saw a gloomy silhouette snatched from the precipice. The hobbit.

"Hold on!" another voice. Thorin. "_We need to find shelter_!"

Her chest fell with relief – shelter. Varna hitched her scarf tighter about her face. Her foot twitched across the ledge -

They all felt it.

Her hands flinched from the rock in revolt: the mountainside began to shake. The gorge below swelled with a thunderous sound, and it rolled from the gloom, quaking the ground at their feet. The mountain groaned. Dwalin's hand slapped against her shoulder, thrusting her from the overhang.

"Look out!"

There was a deafening shriek of rock-over-rock. The mountain shuddered - violently. Varna screamed as her fingers were nearly torn from the cliff, her legs unable to steady. Then the rockface collapsed and boulders crashed down. She slammed her eyes shut as debris dashed her legs and arms.

Bofur was shouting: "….the legends are true! _Giants!_ _Stone giants!"_

Varna craned her neck and squinted into the void.

She thought that perhaps the cold witched her: over the abyss, it rose from the gorge, splintering from the range as if the mountain itself had woken. Varna twitched back a fearful step.

"Oh, my God," she gasped.

The humanoid lurched. It drove a Herculean fist into the air, leasing a second rock - smiting the countenance of a second giant.

"TAKE COVER, YOU FOOLS!" it was Thorin.

And she knew they stood upon one of the creatures, too. Varna clutched at the waking rock as it immediately jerked forward. The storm whirred in her ears; she hugged the cliff for life.

Ahead, Fili grappled for his brother's arm. "Kili, take my hand!"

But the rock was cloven in two and the fissure torn. Kili recoiled from the expanding chasm, forced away from the edge. The plates bounded apart. Ori clutched at her as he lost his footing.

The enemies collided, their giants' battle commenced.

A colossal rumble seized the valley, like a vessel run aground, and their giant convulsed – was defeated. She saw its rendered head fly from the torso. Silence fell.

"_Dwalin_…." But she knew already.

There was a great jolt. The creature veered lifelessly into the mountainside – the collision expelled them from the ledge. They surged forward, into the fathomless black. There was no scream. No rain, no air. Her fingers lost Ori. She struck the rock and, for a moment, was lost in oblivion and excruciating pain.

But she was no longer falling.

And suddenly the rain sloshed over her. With one wheezing gasp she choked the rainwater from her lungs and her eyes flew open. The giant was gone, felled in the deep.

"HA!" someone exclaimed. "WE'RE ALRIGHT! WE'RE ALIVE!"

She had not believed it until then. A euphoric smile cracked her lips. Someone salvaged her from the wreckage and set her upright.

"Are you injured?" The dwarf asked, his voice ringing in her ears. He shook her. "Varna?"

Thorin's face focused. Rainwater dashed his mouth. "_Varna_?"

"Where's Bilbo? _Where's the hobbit_?" It was Bofur. "There. _On the ledge_!"

They turned.

Bilbo clung to the cliff-edge, soundless with fright. As Ori dived for his hand the hobbit slipped, snatching at the rocks with his free arm. Bofur leapt forth. "Give us yer hand, Bilbo!" Still they could not reach him.

Without hesitation, Thorin dropped himself over the ledge. Her heart clenched as he vanished.

"That's it!" someone cried.

Bilbo emerged. All hands were upon him. Varna seized a fist-full of the halfling's coat and yanked him from the edge. As she did, she saw Thorin scramble for the cliff – he miscalculated and slipped.

Dwalin swiped for Thorin' s arm. Caught him. He hauled the dwarf safely from the overhang.

"I thought we lost our burglar!" he panted.

"He's been lost ever since he left home," Thorin growled. He did not look at Bilbo. "He should never have come. Has no place amongst us."

Silence fell. He made to leave.

"You _bastard_!" Varna's voice cracked.

Thorin's retreating figure stiffened. It was done, could not be revoked.

"You arrogant _bastard_," she snarled. "That could've been any one of us!"

"It was his mistake."

"_His _mistake? Six of us near lost our lives! _Piss on your mistakes_!"

"If you're displeased with my skills as a diplomat you can leave - I won't stop you," Thorin's back was still turned. "I will not talk of this any further. _Dwalin_!"

And he was gone. The Company followed. She trembled all over. As he nudged past her, she felt Bilbo's hand shiver timidly over her arm.

"He's an _arse_," she spat, her chest heaving. "It could've been any one of us."

Bilbo smiled sadly.

"I don't know why I'm here in the first place. Don't know what I was thinking."

"Come on," the halfling said gently. "We'll freeze."

Varna looked down at his rain-streaked face. There were cuts where rocks had nicked him. She suddenly realised that her skin stung all over too, and that blood congealed in the rainwater on her arms. She saw how he had suffered the events of this dreadful night and would desert it for the halls of home in a heartbeat.

She knew that she could not abandon him. It would not be for Thorin's quest, his sake, or Thorin's gold. It was a sudden, sweeping compulsion: they were to be thieves together– a brotherhood amongst burglars. And this she could not forsake.

.

.

The storm had calmed. Now the mountains were fraught with mist; he was glad. It might beguile the things that lurked here. Thorin sat before the maw of the cave - one of many, in these parts – and watched the valley in silence. He longed for rest and peace of mind.

Each sunrise brought them closer to Durin's Day. How much longer must they wait for the wizard? Perhaps Gandalf would not return, brought to his senses by the White Council? By the _elves_.

Thorin would not risk another sundown in the mountains. The thunder had near claimed half his Company, and with it Fili. It was utterly beyond the vernacular and will of his heart to tell a mother, a _sister_, that she had been robbed of a son. The thought was intolerable. No. They would leave regardless of Gandalf's return.

Thorin's attentions shifted. Something stirred in the cave.

"There are no prisoners here," he spoke to the nothingness. "You may go where you please. Sit down."

After a moment's hesitation, he heard her bare feet on the stone. She sat some distance away, crouched against the rocks. Varna stared into the fog.

"Do not you sleep?" he asked, at last.

She ignored him, her head high and proud, her grudges overt. Thorin scoffed. If she wanted his remorse it was in vain.

He stole a glance.

Her hair was crisp with rain, wild about her face. Not even moonlight pricked in the blacks of her eyes – her gaze devoured the stars, swallowed the sky. Blotted out all the light. He had not seen before such desolation and hollowness in a woman since the hardships of his people. Thorin noticed that she shivered. The sodden shift she wore clung to her breasts, gathered at her nipples.

He looked away.

"He admires you, you know," she said suddenly. "Bilbo. Won't say a word against you."

"Considering it's an impulse you yourself can never refuse, I'm surprised."

Her laugh was hollow. "I see. You expect me to keep my mouth shut, for the sake of your pride?"

"I expect nothing. After all, a thief is servant only to his gold."

"Say what you want," her eyes were cold. "But I never stole what I didn't need. I wasn't ever cruel without reason."

"Tell me, when did I ask for your counsel?" Thorin turned on her sharply. "I will not allow the mistakes of a halfling to endanger the lives of my kin. A responsibility you – a _criminal_, will never know."

There was a silence. Varna stared at her hands and wrung the scarf in her fingers tight.

"What is that damned thing, anyway?" he snapped. "That rag. What is it to you?"

"Why do you ask?" she said bitterly.

"You are never parted with it."

"And because of what you are, _who_ you are, you think of it as your right to ask?" Varna's words were wry. She stood. "You _are_ a king, Thorin Oakenshield. But you are not _my_ king. _Goodnight_."

She left, vanishing into the cave. Thorin touched the wound at his jaw, where she had sheared him, and was filled with unease.

"So you keep reminding me."

.

**Thank you very much for reading! Sorry about the length! Reviews are always appreciated. Hope you enjoyed it. Next one shall be shorter most definitely! :) **


	7. Six: A Cloak Once Clasped

**A/N: Back again! Hope everyone is well.**

- **Firstly, s****orry for the wait. A couple of weeks ago a friend told me she was involved in a local film project and they were looking for a writer. I accepted and have since been writing and finishing off the script. Now that's finished I can focus all my creative energies on this, yay! Special thanks to: **

_AberdeenFalls; Avriella; Belabsouza; .ness; Carlypso; Delta18; Devryn; Elentary; Esvisionik; FlaggmasterRand; Razzika; UKReader; laura en eryn; lostinloneliness; Luna153; mamabam; westwingnut221; xDaughterofKingsx; yarrowbadrabbit; nomorebananas; liriethmaethor; Tathal; jinx248; SylphJr; Viper; Purr; Elven Kat; Lelani101;EvilPurpleCookiePenkeyMonguin; Starriver92; mcgonagiggles; Typewriter101; RandomTweaker; Holeintheworld93; Sarasrii; Nyeht; Rae01; Nicooled; ; luciluce; Shadowkitten8; janaoliver; SerendipityAsAlways; SunnyGirl88; Cyphercat; DrAnime203; animechika24601; UnderRugSwept13; Samolfran; CreepyLOTRfangirl55; BloodBlackAlchemist LadyxAbsinthe; becky157689; FlyingPurpleUnicorn; Ninediva; islegion; ThisIsYourWaffleSpeaking; Ginger-ninja-squid-fish; Iris-Read92; ForAslan; blitzbeine; forgottenchangeling; elamoureux2029; XxxBellaBellaxxX; Chidori-No-Kyoku; Unorthodox119; Alisond68; angel-unknown; Dagdoth Fliesh; Mid9ight0Wolf; 18; Jenna Blueleaf; and various guest readers (Sorry if I've missed someone)_

- **This chapter will come in two parts. :) ****Heads up for a ****_little_**** bit of violence, gore & language. I'm also looking forward to exploiting the M rating, but there is a time and a place. Definitely a time and a place!****  
**

- **As always – I really value your feedback/guidance. Constructive criticism and praise are both welcome. If you're new to Highwaywoman feel free to join us! I hope you enjoy it. **

.

.

**CHAPTER SIX: A CLOAK ONCE CLASPED **

_**Part One**_

.

Thorin watched the blackness above, his heart little more than a dull twitch in his breast. For hours he had fumbled through thought and mind, straying in vain between sleep and wake – but he was denied peace at either province. Turned from every threshold. He reeled in the shrill damp of his clothes, aching to lie in nothing but his own skin against the stone, if only for a moment's respite.

The cave was black as pitch. He watched the entrance vigilantly, hoping that the archway would soon cast the crooked shadow of Gandalf the Grey, returned for them from Rivendell.

But the night aged, his hopes were spent, and there was no wizard.

Elsewhere, someone stirred in the cave. They did not wake. His nephew's head lolled, and he slept on.

Thorin's eyes narrowed concernedly: the wound at Kili's throat, cut by a woman's knife, had healed well. Nevertheless it filled him with unease: an eternal reminder that his distrust was to him a shield itself, as were the earliest words he remembered of his father:

_A man exposes his back only to two things, Thorin: the first, a corpse. The second, to those he completely trusts._

And however much he desired it, he could not trust _her._

_You are a King, Thorin Oakenshield, _her words were to him. _But you are not my king. _

He had often lived in the security that reading lies on a man's lips, in a man's eyes, came easily to him. But Varna…when he looked upon her face he could pass no sentence; she was neither enemy nor friend. He knew there had been a part of her, on the night of their meeting, that had aspired to murder. Now she slept within his Company as if the woman who robbed from the road at the point of a blade was long dead. As if she had cast aside a cloak once clasped, never to be worn again.

No. It could not be so simple.

In fact he was convinced of it. From the moment she had sliced him from jaw to cheek he was certain that the woman brought before him as a thief remained very much alive. And this troubled him.

He knew he should despise her.

Gods, the girl despised _him _well enough. That, he could read.

She looked upon him as if he were the least deserving thing to draw breath. As if it had been his knife and hand that had cut the toe from her foot. It was a guilt he had sworn never to undertake: what cares could he have for the bitch that once sought to cut his nephew's throat? What cares could he have for a thief's fate? It was of no concern of his.

Until the day she was beaten to her blood.

He had learned of her torture. Of the man named Ward. And despite himself Thorin could not smother out the discomforting notion that he somehow was accountable. That he had sent her to this fate.

Thorin looked at her.

He could not deny that he had admired human women before. And though she wore a man's britches it did not altogether blur the woman's shape beneath it. Any eyes, lecherous or no, could you tell that. She was thinner than he liked a woman to be, and tall. Her legs were lithe, lean – strong. And soon the carvings left in her by Orc knives would scar. Varna was not an immediate beauty as were ladies of songs and tales.

And, though Thorin would never speak of it, this was a quality in her he rather liked.

How old could she be? By the measures of men he could only estimate her at having reached twenty, or slightly before. He had not thought to ask. And the rag she carried always. Why?

How little he knew of her.

He feared to what ends such mystery could be devised. He feared to trust. Feared to pity. He feared to love her as he did his Company -

_Enough of this. _He sighed angrily. _Enough. _Thorin crossed his arms about his chest and closed his eyes. After a moment someone moved about within the cave. There was rustling. Then words were spoken.

_"Where d'yeh think you're going?"_ came Bofur's strained whisper.

"Back to Rivendell."

Thorin flinched to full consciousness. _The hobbit_. There was a scuffle as Bofur leapt to his feet.

"Yeh can't turn back _now_," he pleaded. "You're part of the Company! You're one of _us._"

"I'm not though. Am I?"

_Let him flee. _Rage rose in his chest. _Let the coward flee to his beloved Hobbiton. _

Bilbo's voice filled the darkness. "Thorin said I should never have come and he was right. I'm not a Took, I'm a _Baggins.._. I don't know _what _I was thinking. Besides," he added quietly. "There's a true burglar lying at your feet. She's the one you need. I'll only hold you back."

There was a moment of silence as Bilbo paused.

"Bofur?" he said, finally.

"Aye?"

Bilbo's words were sincere. "Look after her. When I'm gone."

Bofur nodded.

The hobbit continued: "I should have turned back the moment she came to us. Never should have run out my door..."

"You're _homesick_!" Bofur tried to console him. "I understand - "

"_No_, you _don't_! You don't understand, none of you do - you're _dwarves_! You're used to – to _this _life, to living on the road. Never settling in one place - _not belonging anywhere_!"

Silence. Bilbo regained himself.

"Look, I – I'm sorry - "

"No, you're right," the dwarf said solemnly. "We don't belong anywhere."

The air fell from Thorin's lips. He could not abide the truest words he had known spoken so openly.

Bofur embraced the hobbit by the shoulder:

"I wish you all the luck in the world. I really do."

He heard the scrape of Bilbo's staff over stone as he made to leave -

"Wait," Bofur called out. "What's that?"

Thorin gave a start as the stone around him blushed pallid blue; a Gondolin blade was unsheathed. Something was amiss_._ The cavern swelled with the guttural clunk of metal over metal. His chest tightened – and the ground in their standing gaped apart like a split seam.

"Wake up!" Thorin gave someone a hard shove, and bolted upright. "_WAKE UP_!"

.

.

Varna had barely flinched awake when the stone beneath her slipped away.

They fell through the mountain.

Air assailed her. The chill of the cavern dropped into dank nauseating heat. Varna flailed – could not scream. A thick-fingered hand sought hers amidst the turmoil but neither could keep hold. She swiped blindly. Heat licked at her arms as the torches aside her blurred into one single stream of flame –

She was the first to touch ground. The dwarves landed in a crumpled pile beside her, and around them rose a hutch of wrought bone, bark and iron. A foul stench sprang from the heat.

Then strangulated shrieks rang in the dim, and the cavern walls seemed to crawl.

_"Goblins," _Fili hissed, springing to his feet.

Within the second creatures were scaling the piled bodies. Varna flinched away as a gangly claw made for her through the tangle. She lashed out with both fists – blistered hide slid over her knuckles. Revolt turned her stomach. The horde assailed from all sides. Teeth gnashed at her arms. Tugged at her. Pulled. Snapped –

"Don't struggle, lass!" it was Dwalin, subdued by a number. "Save yer stren – _get yer hands off me_!"

Before she could respond she felt a sharp jab at her spine.

_"Get in line!" _A goblin screeched, spear-in-hand. _"Go on! Move!"_

Varna scrambled forth and was marched into step, turning back for a moment. She spotted something amongst the clamour. The hobbit. Her stomach clenched and she thought him trampled to death – but then he raised his eyes to hers, unseen in the riot.

_Run, _she tried to say. _Get help, Bilbo. _

_"Keep movin'!"_ she was pushed forward once more.

Like hornets over prey the creatures had taken them by sheer number, and now they were herded through the narrows in the rock, deeper into Goblin Town, forced into line. One great cackle drummed against the stone, piercingly loud, and the cavern soared to a sickening height – where thousands, _thousands _of creatures gawked from its towering walls. She was afraid. Bridges of bark and rope veered from end to end. The rocks wore the bloody red of torch-fires, devoured almost entirely by scaffolding.

There were no narrows now, no places in which to hide. Varna sank to a crouch in the hope that she would not be the first face picked out from the throng.

A leathery claw yanked at her arm.

The swarm halted, descended upon the foot of a great chair. A throne.

Revulsion prickled in her skin as her eyes fell upon the hulking thing before them.

He cared not for the modesty of the flesh. As the creature moved every expansive inch of his naked bulk quivered. The sullied loincloth at his groin swung between thick ulcerated thighs. Warts and welts leafed him over, and the toothed crown atop his head declared him King. The Great Goblin.

The ground groaned beneath him as he jostled forth.

"Who would be so bold as to come armed into _my Kingdom_?" he rasped, weighted on the butt of his sceptre. On it was mounted the bones of a beast. "Spies? Thieves? _Assassins_?"

A scout spoke: "_Dwarves_, your Malevolence."

"_Dwarves_?"

Varna lowered her eyes hastily.

The scout gestured to the Company. "Found 'em on the front porch!" he tossed numerous weapons before the throne. "They were carryin' these!"

The Great Goblin looked the heap over with brief distaste.

"Dwarves _indeed_," he concurred. "Not many dwarves do we find in these parts! But no matter; I should like to have the truth of it, nonetheless – not that it shall do you much good," he grinned, and spoke now to his prisoners. "Do… _enlighten_ me. What business takes dwarves so far into my mountain?"

The Company were silent.

But the Great Goblin seemed only further pleased.

"Very well. There are _other _ways of inspiring talk," he turned to his subjects. "Bring up the mangler. The _bone-breaker_! And start with the youngest!"

"_WAIT_!"

As Thorin forced his way before him the King's mouth split into a delighted leer.

"Well, well, _well_. Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror. _King-Under-The-Mountain_," he offered Thorin a mock-bow. "Though, I must confess. I see no mountain – no more than do I see a _King_!" His laughter was a phlegmatic caw. "Which makes you…well, I suppose _nobody_, really."

Thorin did not speak. His chest was still, eyes entirely sober. For a devastating moment Varna thought him defeated.

The Great Goblin regarded him, crutched on his sceptre: "There is one who would pay a pretty price for your head, Thorin, son of Thrain," he warned. "Oh, yes! Word of you has reached far beyond the halls of _my _Kingdom; a bounty lies upon your life."

"That news is old as ruins," Thorin spoke defiantly. "Elves slew the Gundabads who hunted us."

"So I heard," the Goblin dismissed him. "But I speak of another. An old enemy of yours; a pale orc, astride a white Warg."

She remembered the monster who had mutilated her. In panic, Varna raised her head.

And one single, bulbous, watery eye turned upon her.

"_Azog the Defiler_ was destroyed," Thorin growled falteringly. "He was slain in battle long ago!"

But the Great Goblin was quite disinterested.

"So you think his defiling days are done, do you?" he mocked. "I see a face that knows differently."

Then his fleshy arm went out, and with it his sceptre.

Varna flinched as the cold scrape of bone fell at her cheek, to her lips, and finally beneath her chin. She met his gaze reluctantly.

The Goblin angled her face to the torches with a gleeful eye. "In fact, I see a different sort of face _entirely_!" he marvelled. "When first I heard that dwarves travelled with a human woman I had my doubts. And yet, here you stand, Thief-In-The-Trollshaws –"

"_Leave her be_!" Thorin roared suddenly. "Your quarrels are with me, _not_ my Company!"

"For a small fortune, I'll take any man's quarrels!" the King spat, and turned to Varna once more. "You wounded a man's pride."

_Ward._

She swallowed. "Wounded more than his pride."

"And yet, Thief, you are fortunate. For there is no price on your _head,_ oh, no. You're wanted intact. But perhaps …a finger, to join that toe of yours?"

She looked away.

"Docked you like a dog, did they?" The Goblin beamed. "Well, out with it, then, _hound._ Let us have the proof!"

Without warning she was hauled roughly to her feet. Varna squirmed in shock, twisting away as goblin claws bruised her body. The creatures seized her by the legs as if she were a beast to be shoed. Tugged at her boots.

"_Quit your squealin'_!" one of them hissed, and his fingers came round to throttle her.

Desperately she kicked out. One of her legs came free. Then a flailing arm.

"You'll choke 'er!" Oin cried out. "Stop this! Stop this _madness_ at once!"

The Goblin cackled. "But she _struggles_ _so_, master dwarf. It's the only way we might prove her name!"

"Loose your crones," Varna gasped. "And I'll prove it my _damned self_!"

The Goblin regarded her. Then he raised a blistered hand.

"Proceed."

Angrily, she shrugged the hands from her body. Her limp should have been proof enough, but now her legs shook, and she pushed through the swarm towards the front. As she stood before the Great Goblin his dull eyes devoured her.

She exhaled.

Trembling, Varna reached for her left foot. Removed her boot. Then her fingers jerked at the buckles of her brace, and that fell away, too.

All leaned in to see.

The missing toe was a ragged lump, deformed, _hideous _beneath the firelight.

Satisfied, the King turned to his scribe. "Send word to the pale Orc. Tell him: I have found his prize!"

The goblins began to chain their prisoners. She did not struggle. Winced as the iron shackles about her wrist gave a cold bite and snapped shut –

There came a clang, and a jarred cry, and goblin scout threw from him a half-drawn sword. The blade glared menacingly under the torches.

Orcrist.

The Great Goblin gave an anguished howl.

"The _Goblin-Cleaver_!" his eyes bulged with rage and he jabbed a finger towards the air. Towards Thorin. _"Kill him! Kill them all! CUT OFF HIS HEAD!"_

Thorin was rushed to the floor. The arc of a knife flashed above his head -

And it would go no further.

There came a deafening rumble, and a darkness swallowed all. In one blast a belch of searing brightness rushed from singularity, felling all, sparing none. Varna's scream was soundless. Her vision curled as she flew backwards, swept up by the impossible winds.

The glare waned; and all was black once more. Creatures, dwarves, _things_ writhed over her and under her in one dumbfounded stupor and in it remained nothing but fear and panic.

"Take up arms," came a fierce and familiar voice from the smoke. _The wizard. _Her heart quickened."Fight. _FIGHT_!"

War broke around her. She pushed at the things that pinned her down and crawled to her feet. Varna made for the heap of weapons –

One of the creatures spied her first. Varna swore as the shrieking thing launched. Wrestled her to the floor. The bark left her breathless on impact.

But she refused to be murdered so easily.

The two scrambled. Swiped. Beat. Struggled. His knife thrashed forward - missed twice, stained only by old blood. His stench assaulted her. She was still chained. Varna choked for air as the goblin straddled her ribs. He raised his knife high…

The blade came down a third time. Her arm flew out and seized his before he could deliver the blow. Their strengths reached a stalemate. The thing snarled - no matter how he forced, the knife would not be eased into her eye socket.

He yielded first.

Varna pushed forward with all her weight. She threw him down. The pathetic thing feared his life now and jittered beneath her, snarling, snatching at her wildly, pleading for aid. Or mercy. But she anchored the bastard firm and stopped his wriggling. Both her chained fists slammed down. He squealed. _Again_. Varna shut her eyes. _Again!_

She felt the bones of his snout splinter. Hot blood welled in her hands like tar, and the creature was limp.

_"THORIN!"_ It was Fili.

She looked up.

Thorin wheeled round, Orcrist-in-hand, as the Great Goblin lurched towards him. Orcrist slashed forward – and a force shuddered the length of the blade-shaft. There was an anguished cry.

The Great Goblin toppled, his sceptre gone, and staggered towards the platform edge.

Before she truly understood what had happened she screamed. She had tried to leap away. As the King fell, he snatched at the air in the hope of righting himself. It was then that his fingers found her. He swiped out and seized her by the ankle.

He was too strong to fight. The scaffold was gone. The cavern capsized.

And she knew that she was falling.

.

.

Thorin froze as she vanished.

"Varna," the word fell from his lips in but a whisper. Then her name tore through his chest. _"VARNA!"_

He cut down the first goblin to bar his path. His heart would not steady. His limbs tremored – he could not lose the first of his Company here. Not in this foul place. With fury he buried Orcrist hilt-deep between a foe's shoulder blades – pushed the corpse aside loathingly and cursed. The pathway was clear for him.

_"VARNA!"_ he leapt to the edge and looked down.

His guts coiled. He could scarcely believe it.

"Don't just _stand there_!" Varna's eyes were black with fear. "_Help me up_!"

Thorin assessed her chances: the chains about her wrist were caught on a piece of protuberant plank. Even if she were lucky enough to hit the scaffold below, the fall could end her.

"_Thorin_!"

He sank to his knees and stuck out his arm, stretching to the point of pain – but she was beyond the reach of his fingers. The platform groaned beneath him; he knew the rotted bark would not support them for long.

"Reach me!" he ordered. His voice faltered.

She tried to swing forward – the shackles slipped. Varna screamed in terror as the chains snagged once more and she dangled from them powerlessly.

"I can't!" she gasped. "The chain – "

"Enough of the damned chain!" he found himself shouting. "It's your hand that I want, _NOW_! _Take my hand_!"

"_Thorin – "_

"If you don't, I'll cut you loose _myself_!"

"Then why don't you?" she tried to snarl. "Do it, _have done with it_!"

The fighting whirred behind him, with no sign of cease. Thorin knew that his exposed back rendered him an obliging target for goblin knives. He looked at her hard.

"There's no time," he said softly. "_Please_."

She said nothing. He watched the fright set in her face and she was pale and silent, like a spectre.

Then her features contorted – she half-screamed, and raised herself in savage determinism. Her right hand flew up.

Thorin sloshed forward – sharp, and her hand was in his, slick with sweat and blood. She gasped in relief. A fierce smile cracked at his mouth.

"Yes. Now the other – _quickly_!"

He felt her fingers slide within his grasp.

_"Varna - now!"_

Further she slipped from his fingers.

At last, her left hand shot out. The chain quivered. Her right hand broke from his.

And Thorin seized nothing but open air.

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**And there's part one of Goblin Town! A shorter chapter than usual, but mainly because I wanted to split Goblin Town into two posts. I hope you enjoyed it. Feedback is always appreciated. Thank you for reading! **


	8. 7: Sharpest To Wield, Keenest To Loose

**A/N: Hello!**

- **I'd like to thank everyone for your support, and hope that you all find something in this story to enjoy. Thank you so much to all of you for keeping me writing:**

_AberdeenFalls; Avriella; Belabsouza; bewaremadness; Carlypso; Delta18; Devryn; Elentary; Esvisionik; FlaggmasterRand; Razzika; UKReader; laura en eryn; lostinloneliness; Luna153; mamabam; westwingnut221; xDaughterofKingsx; yarrowbadrabbit; nomorebananas; liriethmaethor; Tathal; jinx248; SylphJr; Viper; Purr; Elven Kat; Lelani101;EvilPurpleCookiePenkeyMonguin; Starriver92; mcgonagiggles; Typewriter101; RandomTweaker; Holeintheworld93; Sarasrii; Nyeht; Rae01; ; luciluce; Shadowkitten8; janaoliver; SerendipityAsAlways; SunnyGirl88; Cyphercat; DrAnime203; animechika24601; UnderRugSwept13; Samolfran; CreepyLOTRfangirl55; BloodBlackAlchemist LadyxAbsinthe; becky157689; FlyingPurpleUnicorn; Ninediva; islegion; ThisIsYourWaffleSpeaking; Ginger-ninja-squid-fish; Iris-Read92; ForAslan; blitzbeine; forgottenchangeling; elamoureux2029; XxxBellaBellaxxX; Chidori-No-Kyoku; Unorthodox119; Alisond68; angel-unknown; Dagdoth Fliesh; Mid9ight0Wolf; ajaaguirre18; Jenna Blueleaf; TheRubyToTheRose; justiceintheworldofhp- yearight; AbyssPrime; simplesonnets; HextheDaydreamer; sweetserenity11; SvnNightsNEire; Shannonsmoustache; hobbitlover456; temporalTravesty and all guest readers (Sorry if I've missed someone)_

- **As promised, here is part two of Goblin Town. Longest chapter yet. I feel I owe it for the waiting period! Oh, and there's a new name mentioned: Csaerise, pronounced Sah-Ris.**

- **As always, feedback - positive or constructive criticism, is welcome. If you have any ideas/questions please don't hesitate to ask. Heads-up for gore and violence etc. I hope you enjoy!**

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**CHAPTER SEVEN: SHARPEST TO WIELD, KEENEST TO LOOSE**

**_Part Two_**

As his fist closed over the nothingness before him, Thorin heard her scream. Then the darkness swallowed her – and her cries with it, silenced as if by a clean and perfectly sliced throat.

So few times had he been rendered motionless.

In the dank and feverish heat of the mountain he felt his every fibre shudder, overcome by a sudden and debilitating chill. It was familiar to him. It had been there for the passing of Thror, and for the death of Frerin, his brother. And now here: the ice in his heart, the hand of Death who passed him by, as if to say, _I take what I am owed, Thorin Oakenshield. Until the next, you are spared._

Thorin glared into the blackness where she had vanished. There had been nothing to sweeten her fall.

He turned his palms fearfully. Thorin found that he shook. Bloods mingled in the folds of his fingers, clinging at the coiled hair that slipped beneath his sleeves. It hardened at his face like dirt.

_I sent her to death. _

"Follow me!" he heard the wizard call. The battling had slowed. "Quickly, now!"

"Uncle!" his nephew was at his side, a hand upon Thorin's shoulder. Kili's face was streaked in blood. "Your sword."

He had forgotten about Orcrist.

"Where's Varna?" Kili pressed.

Thorin took the blade wordlessly. His fingers became gnarled roots about the hilt. "Gone."

The hand at his shoulder came away.

"What happened?"

"Gone. Fell with the Goblin."

There was something faint in his nephew's eyes, and it made the apple in his throat quiver. Then Kili's face suddenly hardened. "Uncle, she might still be alive -"

"No."

"And how can you know? How can you _possibly_ know?" his nephew's mouth twitched angrily. "What _if_ she were alive - "

"_None would survive that fall!"_ Thorin found himself snarling. His eyes pricked with a savageness that he could not bring himself to honour inside. He had not expected such grief. "She is gone. Let her be."

He made to leave but Kili seized him boldly by the arm. Thorin's sorrow was suddenly set aside for anger, and he feared what he might say to this begging boy, the very picture of impregnably ambitious youth. Kili's eyes were gleaming.

"Let me climb down," he said. "I'll take Fili with me. _Please_. I'm as good a cragsman as any!"

"You go down there, you're a dead man!" Thorin growled. "I won't have it - "

_"Varna would do the same for you!"_ Kili's voice was coarse with pleading. "You know it, I see that you do!"

Thorin looked away. "She was a criminal who once cut your throat. She did not love you, nor any of us. Only the gold." He spoke to Kili but the words were for himself. "The mountain wanted her, and it took her."

"That's not true."

"Spare me the gallantry, nephew."

Kili's lips tightened.

"Since the day you set her loose," Thorin's words were like the cut of a knife by a hand possessed in the mania of rage. Now he could not guard his tongue. "I know you have favoured her. And it clouds more than your aim. "

Thorin turned, jerking free of his nephew's hand, and charged the bridges between the Goblin towers. There would be more coming soon, and Orcrist's bite crueller than ever before.

.

.

_"You squander your strength so, my lady, on tears," the man said, as he set her down. "If tears are all you offer my cohorts then tears are all you shall have, come the morrow."_

_She did not respond. Did not move. She resolved never to speak again. The wetness on her face, by sweat, or by tears, froze in the night's cold. Breath danced between her lips. The heat of it prickled her face with thaw, like the embers of a pyre burning bold before blinking to black on naked skin. But cold prevailed. And soon enough, the shivering became aching. _

_"I must dress this wound," he spoke again, and she could feel his eyes upon her. _

_Varna said nothing._

_After Bolg had done with her what he had her screams had filled the Trollshaws like a woman shattered by birth. As she moaned they jeered. The Orc had held the bloody nub of flesh, her toe, into the moonlight, as if he were minding the purity of some beautiful stone. She saw the glee that pain was to him. Then Bolg rasped something in the Blackspeech – words that seemed to her a castration of the common tongue. It was a command, and suddenly The Ward removed her from the clearing. _

_Now she lay beside him. His fingers flitted over her bare foot – began to handle the wound. Pain seared like a fresh hacking and she flinched away violently. _

_"Stop," she hissed. "You've done enough."_

_"__If I don't," came the brusque reply. "The wound will rot. You will take a fever; your blood will mutiny upon you, and you will die. Lend your stupidity some respite, girl, let me tend it."_

_Varna yielded – denying him would take her nowhere. She feared this man, this Orc's novice, more than the others. Men did not ride with Orcs, or speak their language, nor take a love to their hounds. Was he mad? As a child, he'd seen mad souls in their circus cages. And mad souls were volatile and dangerous._

_She watched him withdraw a set of implements folded within a cloth. There were salves, and lotions, amongst other things. Things she suspected he used to treat the Orc-dogs he adored so._

_There were knives too. Varna thought of one of them sticking from his neck and her heart quickened elatedly, despite herself._

_"__Taking my life might give you some joy, I suspect," he did not look up from his work and did not have to. "But I don't recommend it. You won't run free for long. Not before Ris seeks you out."_

_She looked away, and her face became hot. "Ris?"_

_The Ward smiled. "Csaerise. You have met her once already."_

_His Warg._

_Varna realised that for once his words were worth heed. His beast would make a corpse of her were Ward to only wish it. He seemed to love nothing so well as his hound. Around her massive head was a chain, and it marked the misplaced love The Ward placed in her; she was his. And Varna imagined the fool thought his dog loved him back._

_She hoped that one day Ris' teeth would find their way to her master's bones. Piss on his love._

_"__You never did tell me your name," the man noted. As he began to clean her wound the sting brought acrid tears to her eyes._

_"Why does that matter now?" she barred her teeth. _

_"You interest me," his voice was low. "A young woman who keeps the company of dwarrows. Yes. In fact, I find it very interesting."_

_"Think on what we say of men who ride with Orcs."_

_The Ward's laugh was joyless. "You think I do not know who you are."_

_Silence. Though Varna's insides became brittle knots in her belly she bit away her fear and twisted around. Eyed him hard._

_He spoke again. "We have met before, my lady."_

_When he had stolen her from the road she hadn't had a chance to see him truly. She had expected him a pariah. A knurled and cripplingly ugly thing - a babe mothers considered smothering, a child other children did not play with, a boy the girls did not fancy, and a man other men avoided. _

_But the beauty she found in his face only sickened her further._

_The Ward was older than her, perhaps thirty. His skin was pale, cast over a countenance of features so sharp, so strong that they carried an almost lordly bearing. His hair had once been gold. There was grime in the blond of his beard, and it was salted silver prematurely. His cheeks were becoming gaunt._

_Their gaze met, and the man's pupils pooled into the green of his eyes._

_ "I don't remember you," she replied coldly._

_The Ward set aside his lotions. "I passed through the Trollshaws once, mayhap a year ago. I had no horse and so was a little wary to stop for rest – and, as things unfold, I was right to be so. For there, I met a thief. Or so you aspired to be."_

_She swallowed._

_"You wore a woman's garb, then," he remarked. "But I do not forget your face. Or the britches I was wearing that day. It's curious - that stitching. I could recognise it anywhere."_

_He put a hand on her thigh, thumbing the lace at the britches she wore. His britches. He gave a gentle squeeze._

_Varna stiffened. She saw what he was contemplating._

_"Don't," she warned, thinking of the knives again. "It's never ended well for any of the others."_

_ "I remember appealing similarly as beautiful woman undressed me at knifepoint," he smiled his empty smile. "Do you know, I can't help but take it to insult that you snubbed the use of my tunic that day. Was it so distasteful?"_

_To Varna's relief he withdrew his hand from her leg. Still his stare did not leave her face. _

_"As I recall you were in such haste," the glint in his eyes was absinthe. "Never has a woman rendered me naked so swiftly. At first, I thought myself the luckiest man living - that I may have chanced upon a nymph in heat!"_

_Her jaw clenched. _

_"But I'm also perceptive. Always have been," he smirked. "I saw how dearly that dress clung to you, how could I not?" _

_Her body tautened. There were fresh tears in her eyes. "Please."_

_"Even afterwards, I often wondered what became of the girl who cut me for sake of my trousers, and her secret. Was it a well? By drowning. Is that the mercy you chose?"_

_She threw up her head in rage. Her hand cut through the air to hit him in the face, but his reactions were expert. He caught her by the wrist._

_ "Thief-In-The-Trollshaws," he mused. "You're much more delicate than I first thought."_

_The mirth in his eyes dissolved to hate. _

_He struck her with his free hand. There was a sound like crackling kindle and Varna's head snapped aside. The cuts at her cheeks tingled with his beating. _

_Her eyes flicked to the knives. But before she could even think to lunge for them he leaned in close, seizing her forcibly by the upper arm._

_"Consider those knives once more and I'll show to you exactly how they bite," he said coolly, lips to her cheek. "I know your vulgar secret, my lady. Remember that, the next time you entertain the thought of murdering me."_

.

.

Something hot trickled between her brows. Blood. Varna inhaled sharply, and her lungs gave the protest of a cramped muscle being forced into motion. A cough crackled through her chest. Grit floured her lips. Dust shed from her as she moved, and it was on her skin, thick as mortar in her sweat.

Fear began to close down on her windpipe like fingers.

_Thorin tried to save me, _she recalled. _He couldn't. I fell._

_How long did I dream of Ward?_

Varna's eyes flickered, white, wild. She could not see past the darkness. It was silent, impenetrably black. Her heart became the only sound she heard. The torches above were gone, each pinhole of flame snuffed out. So deep were these parts that even the goblins had chosen to man their crude dwellings elsewhere.

The flicker in her breast became pounding.

_This place does not love me. _

More blood slipped from her suspended wrists…it splattered her face as she dangled from the rocks by her chains, like a carcass on a meat hook. She was suddenly afraid the wrist had broken. There was barely sensation in the lameness of her arms. No floor for her feet to touch.

_It could be a long drop, _she thought fearfully. _Could be leagues deep._

"Fuck," she whispered. Tears burned her eyes. "Oh, _fuck_."

She glared into the black; bated breath, brazenfaced, wrestling her cowardice. _Craven, _she told herself angrily. _Fear is the sharpest weapon to wield. The keenest arrow to loose. It cuts in only one place, will take always the heart. You know this._

Thorin's face appeared to rise before her out of the black.

_Reach me_, he had ordered. _It's your hand that I want. Take my hand. _

It had been no fault of his. Her fear had got the better of her. Thorin could not have done otherwise.

Varna's resolve strengthened: she began to wriggle.

The chains groaned against the rock. She lurched violently. Then a shriek of steel over stone – the girl jolted free.

The fall was shallow.

Varna lay still as the echo waned in the cavern, afraid to expose herself. Her drop had sounded like a shot of black powder.

At last, the quiet came.

The stench of something foul singed at her senses. Bat faeces. Varna tied her rag about her nose and mouth. Her fingers began to wander the ground in her blindness.

Bones. Small creatures devoured and tossed aside by bigger ones.

She swallowed dryly. Her fingers sought something especially sharp and sturdy – it felt like a small tooth, or a knife-like tusk. She was reminded for a moment of the Great Goblin's sceptre but pushed aside the thought. Varna jammed the bone into the lock on her shackles. They were poorly-made, or old, and the left one opened almost instantly. The right resisted.

Her smiling lips straightened as a cry rolled the length of the cave. She went cold.

The squeal came again, fainter now.

"_Bilbo_," she said quietly. Her free hand tightened around the tusk.

.

.

Three assailed him at once. Thorin sent Orcrist in full revolution of his standing and felt throat, gut and bone part the path of the blade. The corpses toppled at his feet, soiled in their blood. He leapt the bodies. Aside him Dwalin slammed his war hammer into the snout of a creature – the features dented inwards, but it would not die. Dwalin snatched the thing by its throat. He brought the creature to one of the torches and let it scream in the flames.

Thorin passed by. He ached for breath, was slippery in the sudoral heat of his coat.

A goblin before him cocked a crassly-forged arrow in his bow. Before he could loose it Thorin shunted into him shoulder-first. The thing squealed and slashed at him with a swiftly-sought pocketknife. The goblin knew it was an act of self-avenging – as the knife cut Thorin's face he slipped Orcrist between the creature's ribs. When he wrenched the sword out the thing died.

They charged in Gandalf's wake, all trust and direction put into his keeping. Thorin did not know the way, and he was not quite sure the wizard did either. They cut down foe after foe, scrambling through the Goblin's labyrinth like blind beetles through highgrass.

"More coming!" someone cried.

Thorin turned back a moment and saw the cavern walls ripple with movement. Things were scaling the scaffold. Hundreds more.

He looked at his feet. There were a series of knotted ropes there, thick as logs. They bound this hideous place together.

"Cut the ropes!" Thorin roared, raising the goblin-cleaver. _"Cut the ropes!"_

The ropes were hacked, and they sprang free. The dwarves fought to steady themselves as the scaffold began to shake, and the shelf above groaned as it buckled and collapsed into the abyss before them. Goblin cries came from the wreckage. The Company sprinted past him, but Thorin lingered.

The way back was mangled, utterly destroyed.

_Even if you are alive_, the words he spoke to her left him cold with guilt, _you will find no way out._

.

.

She flattened herself to the walls, chained hand out in front, the shackle dangling limp at her wrist. Her eyes would not adjust to the dark. Varna groped the rock for balance, clutching the sharp bone in her free hand. It trembled, and would not stop.

The shrieks had ended, smothered out.

She knew it in her heart that Bilbo had not escaped. She remembered his face, milk-white within the horde. Of course he hadn't escaped. Varna surprised even herself as her legs moved without instruction, carried her to where she must be. If he was down in this place she would not leave without him. _A brotherhood amongst burglars._

Varna froze where she stood, her breath caught between lips and lungs:

A voice, shrieking and constrained. It began to sing. The song rebounded the stone and croaked away into the silence.

Suddenly her fingers found a large gap in the rock. Cold air fluttered through, and clearer the song became:

"…_the rocks and stones are like old bones, all bare of meat!"_

Varna crouched and inched inside, finding herself clambering rocks and boulders. The stones became slippery, mottled with watery light. Fright began to unsteady her footing and she lay still for countless seconds, until she was certain she remained unseen.

Finally, she climbed to the edge, flattened down at the overhang. Varna peered down.

Her skin became gooseflesh.

In the centre of the lake, the Creature straddled something small, but it was not Bilbo. What little light there was hollowed his naked flesh, coring out the skeleton's shape beneath. Its eyes were keen as a cat's. She sank away, suddenly wary, as he began to sing once more.

_"…cold as death, without no breath, iss good to eat_!" the last note was suddenly hacked away by a jarring cry – his catch gave a struggle. She recoiled as the Creature snatched a rock into his long fingers and brought it down – hard. His prey's skull sank with a snap. The murderer's hands were black and sticky to the knuckles.

Something in her periphery glinted. Varna's head snapped sideways – it was blue, for the briefest of moments.

_Bilbo._

As quickly as it appeared, it was gone. She could see nothing in the fresh dark.

Varna looked back to the lake.

The Creature had vanished from his perch. Panic surged through her. She glanced back to the spot where the light had been, increasingly less convinced that it had been there after all. Her gaze flicked frantically through the darkness.

_The mind sees what it wants to see, _she only half believed it. _I can't stay here._

Whatever lurked in this cave was no friend to her.

Legs jittering beneath her, she began to climb out.

.

.

As they wheeled the corner, goblins dropped from the walls, launching into their midst. Thorin raised his shield-arm and knocked aside the enemies, throwing his fists into the chaos. His fingers sought the coarse flesh of a goblin throat – he slammed Orcrist through the brittle chest bone and thrust the corpse away, into the deep.

He looked ahead.

A bridge joined the mountain together. Slabs of bark, hitched together by rope so rotted thin it was like spider's webbing. Beneath it: a gorge of darkness, countless leagues deep. It was the only crossing.

Gloin and Dori were the first to chance it.

The bridge lurched and the beams splintered mid-way, spewing its debris like ash from a volcanic summit. The dwarves skidded to a halt. A shard of bark darted past Thorin's face and raked him by the ear.

Two large hands came through the destruction, a crowned head, the huge body. Thorin inched back a step in disbelief as the Great Goblin raised himself to stand, his defiant smile one of only those returned from the most final landing of all.

_You were dead_, Thorin thought. _Dead. I saw the bastard fall. _

The King fixed his waxen eyes over Gandalf. "Tasteless magician's _tricks_," he sneered hatefully, and ripped through the air with his sceptre. Gandalf staggered, his fall braced by dwarves at his heels. "But you're nought but an old man, are you?" the Goblin added. "I'll see to it your head's the first whipped off - "

"_Where is she_?" someone cried.

_Fool! _Thorin's heart stumbled over its next beat. _Keep your silence!_

Kili's young face was contorted with rage, the sword in his hand shaking as he spoke again. "You took her down with you. What did you do with her?"

Disquiet stirred the swarms of creatures around them. The Great Goblin's lips curled like worms out of soil. He was grinning.

"You're a feisty boy," he said. "A feisty boy for a feisty girl. She did her fighting, all the way down. Not to her success, might I add."

Thorin's fists tightened. Wanted to name him _liar_.

His nephew's jaw clenched. "What do you mean?"

"What I _mean_, feisty-boy," those worm-lips writhed in glee. "Is that _I _did nothing. T'was the mountain that did her damage. Opened her up, belly-to-throat," he feigned lament. "The Ward-Over-Wargs will be _so_ displeased - "

"_Enough of this madness, cur_!" Gandalf was suddenly on his feet, and his staff flew out. He jabbed the Goblin in his great monstrous eye. Glamdring flashed in the dark.

Then the Goblin was pawing his neck soundlessly.

Black began to spill from his quivering goitre. He staggered forward, slumped forcibly into the ground. Dead.

Thorin's hands went out for a rail – but there was none, and he knew it before it happened. The bridge groaned, its rotted ropes snapping free, and the walkway plummeted. The torches went out, and there was smoke and wind and darkness and shouting. Thorin dropped down against the nauseating force of the fall, his fingers gouged into whatever crevice he could find.

The walkway shunted into the narrowing walls. Bark shrieked over stone. Friction slowed them. For a cherished moment Thorin thought it might be done.

The last fall clove the bridge in two. The weight forced the air from his chest and he found himself beneath the debris, choking on the dust and heat. He needed to hear the voices of his heirs.

"_Kili_!" he tried to shout, but found _he _was voiceless.

"Here, on your feet!" a hand swept between the rubble and claimed Thorin from the wreckage. He dragged in the cold air thankfully as the others – including Fili and Kili - emerged, white-faced but seemingly unscathed.

He was suddenly filled with inexplicable fear. A foreboding. Varna was gone, how many more?

But before he could begin to count Kili gave a cry of alarm. The goblins were advancing from above like insects to prey, unremittingly vengeful in the name of their King.

"There's too many!" Dwalin rasped angrily. "We _can't_ fight them!"

"Only one thing will save us," returned the wizard, and he eyed them one-by-one. "_Daylight!"_

.

.

Varna's thighs burned from walking. Now she trudged shoulder-to-wall, the arms of her tunic shredded to her skin. _Keep going_, she urged herself._ Or there'll be ice in your blood._ Her bare foot - the one robbed of a boot - was unfeeling in the cold, dashed with cuts and begrimed by blood and shit. The rag fluttered in front of her lips with each breath, and it was a comfort to her, ever the only warmth she knew of late.

She wondered if others of Thorin's Company were dead. A sharp misery clutched at her; she had already failed him. She had lost Thorin's burglar, dead somewhere in this ruthless dark. He would not forgive her.

Varna knuckled the tears from her face. Shivered.

She was looking for air. A breeze. The only sign of such was in the cave she had fled - but she was not so stupid as to fight the Creature that roamed it. His eyes had watched the dark as if it were glass. There would be no contest between them and she'd find her head smashed to pieces as quickly as that pitiful bastard before her.

Perhaps he'd murdered Bilbo, too.

Her shoulder slipped suddenly – she had arrived at a corner. Varna intended to turn it, but her feet would not move. She listened.

Scuffling. Ragged breaths.

Terror began to mount her chest, clap in her heart. Her first thought was that the Creature had followed her and made a game of it. Decided to meet with her face-to-face. Then she listened closer.

The footfalls sounded much heavier, thicker.

_Goblins_. Hatred went hot in her veins, and she forgot her fear.

Then she stepped out, and both her arms lashed into the air. The limp shackle whirred on her wrist – she caught it with her other hand.

The goblin shrieked as the chains came crossed around his neck. She choked the noise out of him.

"Evenin' handsome," she hissed into his foul ears. "You alone?"

He gnashed his teeth together in defiance. Varna tightened her grip.

"_Are you alone_?"

The goblin nodded. He gasped as the shackles slackened slightly, enough for a shallow breath.

"If you're lying, goblin, I'll have your bollocks off – if you have any," she warned. "That's a promise."

"What do you want, _dwarves' slut_?" the creature snarled. His throat began to gargle with laughter. "Dwarves' slut thinks I'll show her out, like a guest!"

Varna yanked hard on the chains and he was silent.

"I think you will," she said.

"Won't."

She slammed him snout-first into the stone walls, reaching for the tusk strapped to her britches. He struggled between her body and the rocks, but she was larger and stronger.

She set the tusk against his right ear.

"Tell me, which do you prefer. This ear?" Varna moved the tusk to his left. "Or this one?"

He scoffed, muffled. "_Dwarves' slut_."

Varna sliced, dismissing the cruel memories that tore through her. T_his must be done. _The tusk snipped effortlessly at the membranous flesh and he began to squeal. Scolding wetness leaked over her fingers. The goblin twitched, screamed.

"_Stop, slut! I yield! Yield!_"

When she drew away the ear was half off.

The goblin was snivelling beneath her as they parted from the wall. Varna tightened the chain, feeling strangely close to the girl who once wandered the Trollshaws armed with her knife and harsh words. "Now show me the way out, before I cut your other one."

He wasn't so wretched that even his own life was valueless to him; the goblin kept his word, though hate her he might. It was a familiar sensation – Kili had hated her also, once.

And Thorin. Thorin hated her still.

Trying to save her life was no doubt an act of duty to him. She found herself wondering what emotions his face would betray if he saw her living now. Perhaps he would be impressed? Varna shook off the strange thought.

They exchanged no words as the goblin lead her through caverns and narrows in the mountain. Varna was wary, tried to remain vigilant. The first chance at freedom and he'd snatch it, and most likely murder her in the process. Varna had felt his heart quicken with thoughts of escape whenever she stumbled on loose rocks.

At last, the goblin slowed and held a mouldered arm to shield his face. "There," he croaked. "There it is."

Her throat constricted. She looked up – sunlight cut through the dark from a slit between the stone. It was the most welcome thing she had ever seen, and so reachable. The amber light was harsh to her eyes. She squinted.

"Move," she said to the goblin. "We're not finished yet."

He was reluctant, but chuckled. "Slut doesn't know much about goblins."

She ignored him. Varna removed the chains from around his neck and pushed him aside. She heard him breathe as if it was his first, but she almost didn't hear him. The sunlight seemed the only thing in the world to her. Adrenaline prickled in her skin and she moved up through the tunnel, her legs scrambling for purchase.

Varna stepped out into the light.

The heat sleepwalked through her dirtied skin. She smiled. The air was no longer filled with mountain's breath. Grass beneath her feet. Trees. The sky blushed pink, was moving into dusk.

"Goblin," she spoke to the wilderness, but turned to him. "I owe you thanks…" she trailed off.

He was standing on the threshold of sunlight and darkness, a wild contemplative look on his gnarled face. In his clawed hand was the tusk from her britches. Their gaze met. He'd made his decision.

The goblin flew at her.

He screamed as he forced her to the floor – the sunlight was fire to him. The anguish only enraged him further. As she pushed at his chest scabbed skin flaked under her fingers like leper's flesh. The goblin swiped the tusk down towards her face, relentlessly, over and over, stabbing the soil with each miss.

When he slammed a fist into her skull she moaned. Sound began to toll in her ears. She dropped her arms, immobilised.

The goblin settled the tusk over her throat.

"_Dwarves' slut_," he whispered, and it slurred in her head. "Dwarves' slut will make a _tasty_ meal."

Before the tusk could move an inch something of immeasurable force and weight swept over the both of them, and the goblin was gone - snatched between the warg's jaws. Varna did not have the courage to scream. Her vision began to sharpen.

The fur around its snout was matted with blood, teeth wedged into the sinewy corpse that flopped in its rolling breath. The warg shook its large head.

The chain she wore gave a dull gleam within her pelt.

_No. _Bile rose in Varna's throat. _No._

Her lips opened and formed one word.

"Ris."

.

.

**Thank you very much for reading! **


	9. Eight: From Their Ashes

**A/N: Welcome! :) **

- **I have to thank you all for putting up for the often long waiting periods between updates, I really value your sticking with the story. Thank you SO much to everyone for your wonderful contributions and encouragement:**

_AberdeenFalls; Avriella; Belabsouza; bewaremadness; Carlypso; Delta18; Devryn; Elentary; Esvisionik; FlaggmasterRand; Razzika; UKReader; laura en eryn; lostinloneliness; Luna153; mamabam; westwingnut221; xDaughterofKingsx; yarrowbadrabbit; nomorebananas; liriethmaethor; Tathal; jinx248; SylphJr; Viper; Purr; Elven Kat; Lelani101;EvilPurpleCookiePenkeyMonguin; Starriver92; mcgonagiggles; Typewriter101; RandomTweaker; Holeintheworld93; Sarasrii; Nyeht; Rae01; ; luciluce; Shadowkitten8; janaoliver; SerendipityAsAlways; SunnyGirl88; Cyphercat; DrAnime203; animechika24601; UnderRugSwept13; Samolfran; CreepyLOTRfangirl55; BloodBlackAlchemist LadyxAbsinthe; becky157689; FlyingPurpleUnicorn; Ninediva; islegion; ThisIsYourWaffleSpeaking; Ginger-ninja-squid-fish; Iris-Read92; ForAslan; pyrotechnicstars; forgottenchangeling; elamoureux2029; XxxBellaBellaxxX; Chidori-No-Kyoku; Unorthodox119; Alisond68; angel-unknown; Dagdoth Fliesh; Mid9ight0Wolf; ajaaguirre18; Jenna Blueleaf; TheRubyToTheRose; justiceintheworldofhp- yearight; AbyssPrime; simplesonnets; HextheDaydreamer; sweetserenity11; SvnNightsNEire; Shannonsmoustache; hobbitlover456; temporalTravesty; Jboyes07; xX-MissyMoo-Xx; Imogen Color; mrsmiawallace88; Mignun; KingofTruands; HODOR and all guest readers (Sorry if I've missed someone)_

- **Think I'm going to begin this chapter with a warning: this chapter is ****_long_****, so I must apologise! I worked really hard to get the word count as low as I could – literally, I edited it down by at least 1,000 words. This chapter had so much material that I wanted to get through as the fic is Varna's story just as it is the Company's, but you'll be relieved to know that an update this long probably won't resurface for a while! Here's hoping! Oh, and sorry if my Blackspeech is a little off… :/**

- **As always, all readers are welcome! I'd love to hear your feedback, positive or constructive. Any ideas or questions, please don't hesitate to ask! **

**- [WARNING] Heads-up for language/gore/violence/sexual references.**

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**CHAPTER EIGHT: FROM THEIR ASHES**

Fright turned her body to lead. It seized her with militant hands, pinning her to the earth like a writhing man to the physician's red tablet. The ache of Varna's last breath sat over her ribs; she dared not loose it.

The goblin's corpse was gleaming with spittle. Stank of blood. His mouth gaped into a grimace, bouncing limply between the warg-bitch's jaws. Ris slackened her bite; her kill sagged into the grass.

He was open from nipple to groin.

Steaming snakes slobbered from the gash in his gut, spilling into the undergrowth. Ris drove snout-deep into the corpse's nave. Fear clung to Varna's heart like a fist. Where was her master?

She sent out a quivering hand – found what she sought. How it would fare against the warg, she did not know. Varna's fingers closed around the tusk.

_Do it._

The moment she was on her elbows, Ris looked up. The beast's snout quivered to a snarl, ears cocking back like arrows in their strings.

Then Varna was on her feet.

Ris roared – the sound thundered through her gorge like powder afire in the barrel of a canon. The beast lunged for her. Varna slashed at the air impotently as the bitch snapped for her neck –

"RIS – _NO_!"

The call of a master was absolute; the warg moved no further.

He spoke again: "Ris, to me. I don't want her maimed. To _me_, my sweet."

Varna's heart clapped, arm raised in the echo of her strike. Ris jerked away, gullet boiling with a bitten-back bark. The man before them stooped to run his fingers through her pelt.

"Sweet Csaerise," Ward pressed a kiss into the bloodied snout. "Off with you, now. Off to your brothers. Seek out the dwarrows, rend them from their rabbit-holes."

Ris snorted, was gone.

Varna's thoughts chased one another. S_eek out the dwarrows…_they had fled the mountains. _Be leagues ahead, _she willed. _Run._

"Be merry for the freedom Thorin-son-of-Thrain all that you will, my lady," Ward said. "It will not quench an empty cup - freedom is a draught you have long-forsaken."

His hands went to the neck of his tunic; he yanked some laces free.

Where Kili's arrow had once skewered him there was fresh scarring. Purple and black and red swilled in the engorged flesh like a spoiled fruit, and he stood lopped like a tipped scale. The scars were gnarled thorns risen in the skin.

"You thought me slain, like the others," he smiled. "In fact you longed for it. Prayed for it, night and day."

"If I prayed for anything at all I wouldn't waste words on _you_. The Gods'll see to you in their own time."

That handsome face soured. "For the fever I fell to as gift for my injuries, they almost succeeded." Ward unsheathed the sword at his hip. "I warned you not to leave my side - that Ris would seek you out. You did not take heed."

Her senses honed; the bare of his chest betrayed the flicker of a pulse. Varna imagined the tusk in her hand driving through his ribs, and up, to his heart.

"The Orc that cut me," she said. "His name was never Bolg. Was it?"

"You take Bolg for _Azog_? The _Pale Orc_?"

"The_ Defiler_."

Thorin's_ old enemy,_ the Great Goblin claimed. _A Pale Orc astride a white warg. _The name in Thorin's eyes seemed to stir a thousand ghosts in their crypts. It made men from their ashes.

"Though Azog lives as truly as you and I," Ward began. "You presume wrongly: Bolg is the _Defiler's_ whelp. His heir."

Her armed hand wavered a moment in revulsion.

Mirth pooled in Ward's eyes. "All things seek the pleasures of the flesh. _All_ things desire sons, my lady. Do you know that the Goblins speak of you as the _Dwarves' Slut_?"

He was goading her.

"You have your titles, but never a name," he mused. "Titles well-earned, though, I _must_ say. I'll have my britches back before the day's end, I vow it. And a taste of the slut they speak so accurately of."

"Taking your bitch from behind lost all its charm, has it?"

The chill absence of denial in his face made her flinch away.

"Attempt to flee, by all means," Ward gestured to the trees. "Either way, I'll still have you. Either way, I shall see dwarrows mounted on orcish spikes, and you on the end of a man's cock."

He laid the tip of his steel against her neck…

…and a kind of madness stole her away.

Varna slammed aside the flat of the blade, sending an uppercut into his stomach, tusk-to-belly, as she had sought to. He gave a shout that was surprise and relish in equal parts – knocked her back.

"_Thief-In-The_-_Trollshaws_," he gasped. "Not nearly half the menace without darkness for her armour..."

He sent the sword swerving towards her head. Thorin's voice cut through her panic, _your footwork is clumsy, Varna._ She parted her feet. Stood firm.

The steel swung down.

Varna flinched sideways and hacked for Ward's exposed neck. He reeled, thrusting her away - but the injury at his shoulder crippled the blow, stunted and feeble.

Her first lumbered for his face.

Heat dripped across her fingers: the bones of his nose crunched away into his cheeks. She yelped as Ward's teeth shred her knuckles. The man clutched at his face, handsome no longer:

"_You fucking little cunt!" _

The pommel of his sword struck her in the temples. Pain bolted through her skull. She lurched.

Ward seized her front.

"This shall be the last time you render me a fool," scarlet spewed where it sloshed from his nostrils to his mouth. "Send my regards to the Gods."

The man threw the girl into the grass.

Suddenly the forest and the sky watched her from above. He dropped himself onto her. Beat the air from her chest. His once-gold hair scratched at her face as Ward crushed his lips over hers, scalding and sharp by broken skin. The tusk was _gone_.

Varna screamed out a name - the first name that her fury sought.

"Cry till you spit up your heart," Ward snarled. "He does not hear you."

"Should've killed you on the road," she spat, and struggled. "If the Gods are good they'll make me your shadow - "

"Does being so _offensively naïve_ bring you joy?" red spittle frothed on his lips. "Do you think the Gods can be _bought_ by what's between your legs? Do you think you can negotiate with the Gods by the point of a _knife_? You're as damned as I, my lady. You'll make no man's shadow. The Gods will _burn you_, along with the rest."

There was a flash of steel: Ward's blade tore the front of her tunic. When it was done he parted the hewn edges of the cloth; her nipples puckered, ribs trembling in the cold.

But what he saw stalled his hand. Lust bowed away to curiosity in his face.

Ward took the thing from her heaving chest, angling it to the light. The green of a single eye glared within the loop of its handle as if through a scope. Marks of ancient khuzdul gouged deep hollows into the iron key.

"How did you come by this?" he demanded.

Varna lied. "It's mine."

"Hardly. These words are khuzdul. They are of no claim to an _illiterate girl_. You stole this from your dwarrows."

He gave the chain a yank; it snapped free.

"_Ward_," she heard herself plead. "Please. I won't struggle. Won't _fight_ -"

"Do you take me for an _imbecile_, or yourself a _stranger_ to me? I know you well enough to know that you would never yield to preserve a _sentiment_. No. This key bears _value_."

She shook her head, but he would not hear of it.

"I will not suffer you as Bolg did," he hissed. "Do not assume I will do you the grace of torture a second time. What lock is this key made for? _Speak_."

_If ever I had known I would not tell you. I would take Thorin's secret to the graveworms, and even they would hear none of it. _

He struck her across the cheek. "_Answer me_!"

_Never. _

"So be it."

Ward's hands went to her neck, thumbs to windpipe.

He squeezed.

_He is too strong to fight, _Varna knew, but clawed him nonetheless. Soon, Terror lost its possession, and Pain its strange government. _Too strong to fight…_she closed her eyes…

_Thwack!_

The throttling had ceased.

Ward was slumped at her shoulder. She was still for a moment, then shoved out warily from beneath him. Her world focused. Varna's lips parted in denial.

The hobbit was already shaking out his cloak.

"_Bilbo_?"

The cloak came around her naked shoulders. The hobbit tightened it the best he could, fumbling at the clasps.

"Are you alright?" he stuttered, eyes averted. "Are – are you hurt?"

She gawked at him. Her voice would not come. Wild, Varna snatched the halfling by his sleeve and crushed him to her.

"Thank you," she croaked. "_Thank you_."

The hobbit was rigid and awkward in her arms. Hesitantly, he embraced her. "I'm sorry, Varna. I'm sorry. That I…I didn't find you sooner -"

"I'll take out your tongue if you apologise any more!" she cried. "You _escaped_! You little bugger, I could _kiss_ you!"

He shied out of her arms. Helped her to stand.

Bilbo cast a queasy glance towards Ward's body. "He won't stay…_that way_… for long - I only hit him with a stone," he admitted. "We need to leave _now_."

_Then he's not dead, _she wanted to say, but she didn't. She fished Ward's sword from the grass.

"The others passed me not long ago," Bilbo was saying. "We'll catch them up – before it gets dark."

Her fingers curled gently around Thorin's key.

_._

_._

The slope seemed to pull him down, earth slamming up to meet his boots. He had an arm raised to his eyes; the light pinched at his sight, but the gold in the sky had never been so longed for. The trees were wane, punching their roots into the hardened soil. Grass balded away to uncover rocks below. They ran without rest from the horrors of the mountain - and all that they had left there.

He had asked for the girl's hand, but she had fallen and died all the same.

Had he hated her so that he had allowed this? Had he _wished_ that she would perish, for crimes he had almost forgotten? Shame soured in his blood. She had shown loyalty when it had her cost blood and limb. The girl had been no more a soldier than their burglar, but he had demanded one out of her regardless. Now she would rot in the mountain, bones unburied, for the sake of his hate.

_She knew the price, _a voice argued. _She signed her fate away with ink. She knew the price, she knew the perils. _

The slope became open terrain. Ahead, the wizard's garb snapped about his ankles as he whirred, counting those who passed him.

"Five…six," Gandalf chunnered. "Seven. Eight. Bifur, Bofur – that's _ten_…"

When the tally counted his nephews Thorin felt that the air came more easily to him.

"Ah, Bombur! That makes thirteen…"

Thorin's insides tangled. _The Burglar. _

"Where is Bilbo?" came the wizard's voice. "Where is our hobbit?"

There was silence, as Thorin knew there would be. He put his head in his hands. Had his quest bought him nothing but blood? If the hobbit did not lie dead in the mountain then surely he had deserted. Burglar-less, Erebor was lost - along with Thror's legacy. _Perhaps this is a just thing,_ Varna's face was in his mind, and she was falling. _If I cannot protect nor serve my people I will never honour it. Perhaps the legacy not mine after all. Perhaps I am a fool, and not a king. _

"Curse the halfling!" Oin was growling. "Now he's lost!"

_No. _Thorin thought solemnly. _Bilbo admires you, _Varna had once said to him. _Won't say a word against you._ She had sprung to the hobbit's defence, always - as if he were her lord and she his sworn-shield. No. Not lost -Thorin's fury had sent him away. Fingers reached inside his throat and seized him by the stomach; the quest for Erebor was in ruins by his hand. He had plucked the wings from a bird and wondered that it did not take flight.

"Well, what _happened_, exactly?" Gandalf barked.

"I'll tell you what happened," Thorin found his voice small. Varna had held the right of it all along. "Baggins saw his chance, and he took it. He thought of nothing but his soft bed and his warm hearth since first he stepped out of his door. We… will not be seeing our hobbit again."

Balin was looking at him with a queer understanding. It deepened his shame further.

Thorin's final words croaked away. "He is long gone."

"And the lass?" Gloin said.

Kili spoke. "We couldn't save her..." and his nephew's gaze flicked to Thorin's in a way that accused.

"Mahal, I knew it. _I knew this were folly!_" Dwalin threw down one of his axes. "I said all along that this was no quest fer gentle folk. And now…now we're burglar-less."

"We failed 'em. _Both_ of 'em," Bofur said. "Fer all we know… our Bilbo's gone, too."

Thorin remembered the conversation between Bilbo and Bofur, the night of the goblin-raid. Remembered the pity Bofur had found for the thief-girl when Thorin had found none.

"Will we make them graves?" Ori whispered.

"Effigies," Dori said.

Thorin looked to his Company. _Grieve the dead when the living are pardoned, _he thought, and was about to say it when a sound rolled from the white peaks, shrill as the wail of a war-horn. The howl jarred in the air, knocking from stone to stone, tree to tree: wargs.

Thorin shut his eyes despairingly. "Out of the frying-pan…"

"And into the fire," Gandalf finished. "Run. _RUN_!"

.

.

Bilbo put a hand on her arm and froze where he stood. "Did you – did you hear that?"

"Yes," she breathed.

"We're close."

"I know."

The howls drained into the quiet. Varna's eyes flicked up the trail that they followed. It drove through the trees, vanishing. The clouds were now black under-night; there were no stars. In each sigh of wind she found a foe waiting for them – goblins come from their caves, orcs on their beasts, or Ward from his slumber.

Varna's fingers found her stolen sword. The steel was wrong in her grip; a beast that would not tame to her hand. Ward's taunts were in her head. _You're not nearly half the menace without darkness for your armour…_

And suddenly his taunts were no longer so.

"Bilbo," she said, quietly. "I've another lesson for you."

"Oh?"

"Hobbits are unseen at the best of times - at night even more so. Wear the dark like your cloak, wear it like your armour."

The hobbit nodded. "Like my armour," he echoed. His gait held a sickly sway, lips tight over his teeth.

"Are you afraid?" she asked.

Bilbo looked at his feet, frowning. Let out a stiff breath. "Yes. Yes, I am very afraid."

_ You're not alone, _she wanted to say, but her gaze was drawn elsewhere.

"Bilbo," she gestured to his hip. "Your sword…"

There was a thread of blue peeking from between the hilt and sheath, like a drowsily opened eye. The halfling gave her a look.

_Orcs, _he mouthed.

No quicker was it done that Bilbo pulled her aside, to the cover of darkness.

Eyes were glowing ahead: jaundiced, ravenous. As the wargs wound between shadows and light she saw the orcs that mount them, quick and keen. They followed. When the orcs sprawled into a clearing, they lingered behind.

Bilbo tensed beside her. "The _trees_," he hissed.

Dwarves were scattered in the high branches, the enemy gathered below.

She sought the closest tree and began to climb as high as her courage would lead. Bilbo separated. Her nerve balled in her belly to be alone again.

The wargs had parted. The thing that passed through the assembly shone silvery against the dark, defying the grey of its brothers.

She looked to the rider; Varna's gut squirmed with recognition.

The smiths of Bree would have been children beside him. The _Defiler_ would wear no armour, as did his lessers. He was stripped to the waist. Where the naked flesh offered itself to the sword the bleached hide was hewn edge-to-edge with scarring, notched more extremely than a king's breastplate. The Pale Orc's left limb was stubbed at the forearm; a hooked blade skewered the meat from wrist to elbow. The orcs had rewritten him in steel.

Azog spurred his beast forward and sucked in the air through his fangs.

"Nuzdigid?" he spoke to the trees. "Nuzdi'gast?"

The words were nothing to her, but her skin was bristling all the same.

"Ganzilig-I unarug obod nauzdanish," Azog grinned. "Thorin undag Thrain."

She found Thorin's name amongst the orcish. _He lives_.

The Defiler thrust his mace skywards: commanded the hounds to kill. "Kod …toragid biriz…_WORORI-DA_ -"

"_Nub_! No!" the shriek cut him off.

A thing sprouted from the darkness. The face was a pained leer. He was sloped on one side. The man bled from the hair and nostrils; hair that had once been gold.

"_Nub_!" Ward's voice broke. "Wait," he gasped.

The hounds stilled.

Azog rounded his warg on the stranger. Understanding cleared in his eyes - then insult. He motioned for Ward's head – but Bolg drew up alongside him. Muttered.

Ward bowed as deeply as his lameness would permit. "Than – _thank you_, Bolg. You have oft shown me a mercy or two," he spat blood and gnashed a gory smile. "I shall remember this."

Bolg snorted, "_Talk_."

_Let him speak out of turn_. Varna thought. _Let it be fatal._

Ward put a hand to his breast. "Azog, my liege – _Goth ob Moria_…" He slipped shrilly between the common tongue and the blackspeech. "Once I was prisoner to Bolg, intended for the knife: but he put me to the warg. For the kinship I find in them, those from which I hail renounced my manhood - I no longer mistake men's right to power. For this, I would see Orcs risen and man purged. For this I would see myself ordained into your noble bretheren. A Wargsman I am, and shall be to you – as I have been to Bolg. Lord in Moria; you must say but the words, and my service is yours. Say but the words, and your enemies are mine."

Azog's lipless mouth twitched.

Ward faltered. "I - offer you blood. The blood of dwarrows' allies. Allies to Thorin, son of Thrain."

Azog's eyes blackened at that. "Yub." _Yes._

Ward beckoned, "Csaerise, to me."

The chained thing stalked into sight. The warg-bitch had something between her teeth, gathered at the scruff. But the scruff became a collar, and the collar a shirt. Then, a waistcoat.

Azog gave a start on his mount.

"Behold: a dwarrows' half-man," Ward announced.

Ris expelled the hobbit onto the stones. The instant Bilbo landed he was scrambling to his feet, sword-drawn. Ward struck him across the face with a fist. The second blow went to Bilbo's belly.

"What is the measure of loyalty?" Ward shouted, and kicked. "_Salvage_ his little life, as he did yours!"

_He speaks to me, _she knew. _Knows I'm here. _In the trees, dwarves restrained one another from leaping down. _He'll_ _beat us both to win their guilt. _

"Ris tastes your fright in the air, my lady. Come down from the trees," Ward continued. "Or shall I break him, your half-man here?"

Bilbo choked. "_Varna, no_ -"

"_Varna_?" the man wet his lips. "At long last, a name to call you by! Come, Varna. You are not the stuff of dwarves. Heed your soft woman's heart!"

Ward yanked the hobbit to his feet and knotted his arms about his neck. Bilbo hawked for breath. The halfling's toes scraped for standing…

When there came a sound of hesitant steps, Ward loosened his grip.

Varna's legs were moving but she had no part in it. The sword in her hand drew a finger through the dirt where she walked. Eyes turned on her, plentiful as stars, but held no warmth.

"Azog," Ward began. "I give to you the Thief-In-The-Trollshaws, and her halfman. Friends to Thorin, son of Thrain."

The Defiler's gaze narrowed, scars stretching with his mouth: the orcish grin claimed itself privy to a jest she did not know.

"Blood," he agreed, in the common tongue.

"Now," Ward called to her. "My sword, Varna. If you would be so gracious?"

She looked to Bilbo – at the cut over his brow. His lashes were flecked with red.

"Free him, first," she demanded.

"It's not negotiable. My _sword._"

She stepped forward.

"Ah," Ward gave a wry smirk. "Hilt-first, I think."

Ris was meandering between them. Varna upended the blade in her hand. When she moved for Ward, the bitch snarled. Ward leaned for the pommel. His fingers grasped the hilt –

Varna's free hand jabbed through the air. She felt the tusk meet with hide, meat, _bone_.

Ward shrieked - delayed, futile.

There was a spray of heat. Varna's arm came away spattered by a mantle of scalding red – and Ris was buckling, reeling, snapping for the thing jutting from her throat. Ward's hands were a chalice of blood the moment he touched her.

Bilbo was vanished.

_Run, _impulse ordered her - but a chill ruptured the length of her spine: there was steel at the nape of her neck.

"Nadal _gru_," Azog told her. _Stop, woman._

He had forsaken his mount. The Defiler's unscathed limb came up to crush her throat into his fist; he yanked her closer.

"Woman is mine," he decreed. "Toragid Thorin undag Thrain biriz. Worori-da! _Sho gad adol_!"

And the hounds set into the trees. They mauled the roots. Stripped the bark. Branches splintered away and smashed the rocks below.

Varna struggled, but Azog's grip was firm.

"_Watch_," he grunted.

The first tree groaned – toppled. Foliage stirred like stormed waves and the dwarves were awash, yelling, cursing _clambering_. Each tree felled its neighbour until merely one remained. The wargs tore for the lower branches, snapping at loose limbs, at cloaks, at the fallen. Below, the trunk was crumbling away from its anchorage, where it stooped at the cusp of a cliff.

The dreadful ultimatum dawned on her.

Azog gave a sudden lurch, violently spooked: around them, the grounds were kindling. Wizard's fire rained from the treetops: the heat caught like a pestilence. Molten forks drove into the darkness. Thick smoke sluiced from the flames. Wargs fled, singed - but the whooping of dwarves rose to cries. The tree severed, splintering over the precipice. Shapes tangled together in the wreckage. There were screams.

Something was climbing from the flames. Varna blinked, and the hulking darkness cleared into a man. Orcrist was gleaming in his hand.

_No, _anger quickened in her heart. _Thorin. Don't be a fool. _

The Defiler's steel sought her cloaked collarbone, ungentle enough to pierce the skin . Wetness the shade of wine sprang forth in the cloth. Thorin's eyes blackened as if from behind the plunge of a visor; warded off reason, welcomed only hatred.

He charged.

Azog flung her aside. Claws were on her again, hauling her up.

The Pale Orc had mounted.

Thorin's the shield-arm was raised, Orcrist readied. The plates of his armour glinted afire lozenge-by-lozenge as he cut through the blaze. His braids were banners spilled into the smoke, tongues of lurid heat lashing in his wake. Cinders spluttered from the ground under each stride.

Azog's warg bounded.

Thorin's strike was poorly timed - beast and rider ran him down.

_Get up, _there was a pounding in her ears and chest. _Get up!_

When Thorin found his knees, the Defiler's mace found his breastbone - and he was twisting in the dirt, reeling like a fish hooked by the lip.

Cold pitted in her belly. _He's dying_. Dwarves were shrieking his name. She had thought Thorin incapable, but he was _dying._ The warg's jaws came around his middle – crushed. There was an agitated clink of plate under teeth; Thorin moaned. His sword-arm slammed the beast by its snout.

The thing roared, flinging aside the body – Thorin recoiled brokenly from the stones.

"Biriz torag khob dudol," came the Defiler's command.

One of his scouts dismounted. A scythe braced Thorin by the chin.

"_Thorin_," she found herself croaking. "Thorin, _stand up…" _

He stirred; a crippled arm thrashed for his sword, but did not prevail. The scythe plunged for Thorin's neck -

There was a screech. Varna gawked as the thing burst from the scout's chest; it gave a jerk, then shunted through entirely. Gondolin blade salivated blue and black. The orc slid lifelessly from the steel.

Standing in his place, the hobbit swivelled the sword between his hands as if the hilt were scorched. Fear drew the roses from his cheeks.

Azog's mouth stretched back over his fangs. "Gu hai doum."

_Kill him._

The Defiler's dogs advanced.

"_Coward_," the words escaped without Varna's willing. "Do you fear half-men so that you would outnumber them, _six-to-one_?"

Azog's gaze found hers. He no longer found enjoyment in her.

The orc gestured to her handler, _kill._

The rake of a knife sounded – but something swift teased the air at her cheeks. The arrow drove through her handler's head; jellied tears sloshed from his socket like heated wax.

Kili was slashing through the smoke, Fili at his heels. Then swords, mattocks and battle-axes clove the flames as dwarves spilled into the clearing.

Someone grabbed her by the hand.

"Do _not_ lose this!" and one of Dwalin's axes was hers.

The weight pulled her hands earthwards. Varna wheeled – saw the channel of a throat barrelling towards her, jaws ajar. The axe in her hand reared up to meet it. The beast buckled as the blade wedged itself toe-to-heel within the meat.

Behind her, Bilbo lashed out as orcs made for Thorin's body.

_He can't do it alone. Go to him - _

A scythe lopped the air at the level of her eyes. She skidded, toppled – when she twisted around in the dirt, Bolg grinned. He made a guillotine with his hands.

She knew what she would cut from him given the chance.

Bolg's scythe slashed towards her face – so forcibly that her defensive blow was forced to her nose. The neck of her axe swerved him aside. Ash streamed in her eyes.

The next strike faltered. A savage breeze tore through her clothes and hair – for a breath, the battling stopped entirely. Each face found the sky: wings the breadth of frigates, bow to stern, soared above. Eyes that would not have sat within her palm picked them from the darkness. The flames swelled, feasting on the storms great eagles carry in their wake.

She was a child again; this was the stuff of _legend_.

The birds swept down and snatched orcs from their mounts, wargs from their feet. Varna launched aside as a felled tree collapsed, beasts writhing beneath the fiery branches. Where she turned the plains were sparse of enemies, scorching, and around her dwarves were plucked from the fires.

When she saw the bird that dropped to claim Thorin's body, her throat went to powder.

The talons closed about him, not ungently. As the eagle pushed away from the rocks, Thorin's shield-arm slipped from between the hutched toes. The oak gauntlet fell away, landing a few feet from her.

Varna ran to retrieve it –

But talons coiled around her belly, and she was flying.

.

.

The water was cold, ushering him downstream. He submitted to it. The armour at his breast chimed faintly, surcoat swathing him over like riverweeds as the current tugged him down.

_Thorin._

The waterline climbed to his lips. His name smudged against the surface, was washed away.

_Thorin._

Hands sought him from the stream. He was rising –

"Thorin."

He opened his eyes.

"The halfling?" he gasped.

"It's alright. We are sixteen apiece; thirteen dwarves, two burglars, and one old man. Quite safe."

Gandalf was smiling at him.

_Sixteen apiece. _A smile coaxed his own mouth – it flinched away; he felt his cracked lips smart, blood welling between his teeth.

The grounds had been burning, and ghosts had thrice risen from their ashes: the Defiler, murderer to Thror, his grandfather, had stood before him restored. The Thief-In-The-Trollshaws, a woman he had seen lost to the bowels of Goblin Town, had stepped from the trees as true as the night she had happened upon his Company. And now…

Thorin stuck out an arm. Hands helped him unsteadily to his feet.

"_You_," he rasped.

The hobbit looked at him, startled.

Thorin spread his weight onto his right leg, grimacing. The memory assailed him: he was felled. The Defiler had bound him to the fate of Thror, and he _had_ feared it. Azog's Justice had screamed - then the halfling was in his place, sword drawn.

Thorin rounded on him.

"What were you doing?" he choked. "You nearly got yourself _killed_!"

The hobbit's eyes found his feet.

"Did I not say that you would be a burden? That you would not survive in the wild? That you had _no place_ amongst us?"

He had once believed it; disgrace unfurled in his heart. His shoulders dropped.

"I have never been so wrong," he said. "In all of my life."

Thorin seized the halfling at the shoulder, pulled him to an embrace. "I am sorry I doubted you," he told him.

Bilbo shook his head. "I would have doubted me, too. I'm not a hero – or a warrior," his unsure eyes fell over the Company, to Gandalf, and to Varna. "I'm not even a _burglar_."

Thorin smiled sincerely. _You shall be. _

A cry rolled in the morning chill; there were eagles overhead. The surroundings made themselves friend to him, and Thorin realised where they stood. He limped forth, heart hammering. The Carrock was sentry to the East, risen hundreds of feet over forest, river and plain. Eyrie to the greats, and watchman as far as the sky was written. When his boots came to a precipice, Thorin halted:

A peak sat the horizon, foreground in gleaming dawn.

"Is that…what I _think_ it is?" Bilbo asked.

"Erebor," the wizard spoke. "The Lonely Mountain; the last of the great dwarf kingdoms of Middle-Earth."

"Our home," Thorin said. _The only home I have ever kept in my heart. _He remembered the young prince he had been in the days of Erebor's glory, when it remained the seat of his grandfather. Thorin looked to his nephews. _Home of our blood – the home that you have never known._

"A raven!" Oin exclaimed, pointing to the creature. "The birds are returning to the mountain!"

"Well, we'll take it as a sign," Thorin decided. "A good omen."

The hobbit beamed. "You're right. I _do_ believe the worst is behind us!"

Ori slipped through the assembly. "Excuse me. Mister Gandalf?" he ventured. "Where…exactly _are_ we?"

"The Carrock, my dear Ori," the wizard peered down at the young scribe. "As it is known to some; an islet of the Anduin. I do believe there is a stair..."

"If that is true, then we must take it - as _soon _as possible," Balin intercepted. "Thorin, we have little in the way of food or water. We must find a way to replenish."

Thorin nodded. "We'll find rest along the way. Fili, Kili – search ahead."

The Company filtered towards the stairs hewn into the Eyot's spine, toiling about the rock - distrustful to the stride. Thorin made to follow, but something caught his notice. He turned back.

She watched the horizon, unmoving, toes to the brink.

The lameness at his hip was suddenly stark to him, but he could do nothing to guise it. Thorin hobbled closer, strangely impelled.

The grey of her eyes mulled in the sunlight, sharp and watchful. They did not hold the self-assurance of the fearless thief he had once found in them. Black hair teased at her face, clinging to grime; the curve of her bottom lip was scabbed by blood.

"It's beautiful," the girl croaked. "This place. I didn't think I'd ever see this far East..."

He realised that she wore the halfling's cloak. Thorin held his tongue.

"It was greater and more beautiful under my grandfather," was all that he said.

"There is a dragon in Erebor?" Varna gestured to the mountain. "Truly?"

"Not for sixty years."

There was a melancholic smile on her lips. "I don't know anything of this land. I did not even think dragons were part of this age. Nor great eagles, or – or _stone giants_."

He found his hands clenching at one another in uncertainty, but she spoke before he could find word to offer her.

"And if the dragon lives?" she said. "You're going to ask Bilbo to fall into the way of its fire?"

"He signed the contract. He knows the fate he risks."

"Then you should stop wagering his life before _he_ must," Varna did not look at him. "And _stop _wagering your life where you mustn't."

Thorin understood.

"You would have me do _nothing_?" he said bitterly. "When faced with the filth who murdered my grandfather and countless of my kin, you would have me sit idly by?"

"I would."

Rage bloomed in his breast. "The Defiler's name was not given blithely. He would have taken your neck from your shoulders, woman or no, and had it mounted on steel -"

"And if Bilbo had missed his head would have rolled beside mine, with yours to follow it."

He sought his anger, but found none: a dead man could not sit the throne under the mountain. Could wisdom be dredged from such a young heart?

"For a tongue sharp as yours," Thorin passed a weary hand over his face. "A moon ago, I might have pushed you from that cliff."

"Well," she smiled. "Your chance is now."

His eyes lingered over her face. _You are not the stuff of dwarves, _the man they called Ward had told her. _Heed your soft woman's heart._ The cloak stirred, revealing her right forearm. It was sloshed with wargsblood, slain to buy Bilbo his life. _You are more the mettle of a dwarf than you know,_ he wanted to tell her. _A woman's heart is no flaw._

"Varna," he said.

She looked at him.

"I know that we do not always see as one," he began. "I know that you think me no more a king than yourself. But I would have you know one thing."

Without his willing, his hand tried clumsily for her arm, but caught her wrist. To his relief, she spared him the humiliation of pulling away.

"I thought you dead in the mountains," the words urged at his mouth, though he feared them. "And when you stepped down before me I thought my mind cheated. I scarcely trust in what I see now. But know this: I am glad."

His hand slipped loosely to hers. Her skin was cold, ridged with closed and fresh cuts. Thorin unclipped the short-sword at his belt, the one that she had once used to cut his jaw.

"I would have you wield this, until you have one of your own..."

Varna flinched back, alarmed. "Thorin, _no_..."

"I was wrong to distrust in you for so long," he heard his voice deepening with earnest. Thorin closed her fingers about the blade. "Use it well."

He turned away, and made for the stairs.

.

.

**Congrats on surviving this monster of a chapter! Again, I'm reallyreallyreallyreally sorry! Thank you very much for reading. :)**

**[NOTICE] August is kind of a busy month for me. My exam results and my birthday are due in the next few days, and we've also had a birth in the family, so I'll be probably be travelling to see my new cousin. I'm also out of town house-sitting for a relative, but I will update as soon as I can. :) Hope you are all well, thanks for reading, guys!**


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